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O 15 




Alfred the Great 

THE TRUTH TELLER 

MAKER OF ENGLAND 

848-899 



BY 



BEATRICE ADELAIDE LEES 

" King Alfred to Edward I.," " The Central 
THE Middle Age," etc. 

Sometime Tutor of Somerville College, Oxford 



Author of " King Alfred to Edward I.," " The Central Period of 
THE Middle Age," etc. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
tlbe Iftnfcfterbocfter press 

1915 






Copyright, 1915 

BY 

BEATRICE ADELAIDE LEES 



Ube lkn{cIierboc<!ec ipres0. mew IBocb 



MAV 22 1915 



I 

'.rz) ni A 1 n ■< -1 r» /I 



AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN 

In small proportions we just beauties see, 
And in short measure life may perfect be. 



Ben Jonson. 



PREFACE 

THE justification for adding to the long list of 
biographies of King Alfred the Great lies 
in the abiding charm and permanent importance 
of the subject. No statesman of the past has a 
better claim to be included in a list of Heroes of the 
Nations. His life and work have been studied by- 
scholars of many generations. But the subject 
is still unexhausted and recent years have made 
considerable additions to our knowledge of it. 
When, as in the case of the ninth century, contem- 
porary sources are scanty, and of doubtful inter- 
pretation, it is specially needful to keep up with 
the advance, of historical and literary research. 
Modern scholars, notably Professor Liebermann, 
Mr. Plummer, and Mr. Stevenson, have illumi- 
nated many dark places, but it still remains to 
bring together the chief results of their labours, in a 
compact and coherent form. This is what I have 
attempted in the present work. At the same 
time it is based directly on such original authori- 
ties as are available for the period, and, in 
particular, on Alfred's own writings. 

The principal authorities, contemporary and 
secondary, which I have most frequently used in 
writing this book, are indicated in the Bibliography. 



vi Preface 

To Professor Vinogradoff, Corpus Professor of 
Jurisprudence in the University of Oxford, to 
Mr. E. Thurlow Leeds, F.S.A., of the Ashmolean 
Museum, Oxford, to Miss Edith Wardale, Ph.D., 
of St. Hugh's College, Oxford, and to Professor 
Stenton, of University College, Reading, I offer 
my grateful thanks for personal help and sugges- 
tions. I desire, also, to thank the Master and 
Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for 
their kind permission to reproduce from the MS. 
of Matthew Paris in their library the two drawings 
of King Alfred. 

B. A. L. 

Oxford, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I 

Europe BEFORE Alfred THE Great . . i 

CHAPTER II 

England before Alfred the Great . . 22 

CHAPTER III 

The Childhood and Boyhood of Alfred — 

848r866 61 

CHAPTER IV 
^LFREDUS SeCUNDARIUS — 866-87 1 • • 1^5 

CHAPTER V 
i^LFRED CyNING — 87I-878 . . . -134 

CHAPTER VI 

The Testing of Alfred. The War in the 
West and the Winning of London — 878- 
886 156 

CHAPTER VII 

The Victories of Peace. I. The Alfredian 

State 200 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Victories of Peace. II. Alfredian 

Society' 275 

CHAPTER IX 

The Victories of Peace. III. Alfredian 

Literature . . . . . .321 

CHAPTER X 

The Six Years' Peace, the Three Years' 
War, and the Building of the Long 
Ships — 887-896 390 

CHAPTER XI 

The Last Years of King Alfred. Port 

after Stormy Seas — 897-899 . . . 410 

CHAPTER XII 

The Myth OF King Alfred ... . 433 

APPENDIX 

Inscriptions on the Monuments to King 

Alfred at Athelney and Wantage . . 467 

Bibliography ...... 469 

Index ....... 473 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



THE ALFRED JEWEL IN THE ANGLO-SAXON ART 
COLLECTION OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, 

OXFORD .... Frontispiece ^ 

Found in 1693 at Newton Park, Somerset. Pre- 
sented to the Bodleian Library in 171 8 by 
Thomas Pakner, of Fairfield, Somerset. 

THE HORSED VIKINGS . . . . .12 

(National Museum, Stockholm.) 
From Traill's Social England, Vol. I. 

THE RING OF ALHSTAN ..... 34 
In the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

A VIKING SHIP FOUND AT GOKSTAD . . 52 ' 

From Traill's Social England, Vol. I. 

THE STATUE OF ALFRED THE GREAT AT / 

WANTAGE . . . . . .62 

Photo, Reveley, Wantage. 

By H. S. H. Count Gleichen, 1877. 

THE ALFRED JUBILEE MEDAL OF 1 849 ^ 

OBVERSE AND REVERSE . . . . 92 »^ 

THE RING OF ETHELSWITH, KING ALFRED's 

/ 
SISTER, WIFE OF BURHRED OF MERCIA . 92 ^ 

(British Museum.) 

y 

THE RING OF ETHELWULF (British Museum.) . 92 

ix 



Illustrations 



FACING 
PAGE 



A MAP OF SOUTHERN BRITAIN IN THE TIME ^ 

OF KING ALFRED . . . . . IIO ^^ 

From Plummer's Life and Times of Alfred the 
Great. 

THE WHITE HORSE AT UFFINGTON . . . 120 "^ 

Photo, Reveley, Wantage. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON EARTHWORKS AT WAREHAM I48 

Reproduced by permission from "An Intrp- 
duction to the Study of Local History and 
Antiquities " by John E. Morris and Humfrey 
Jordan, published by Messrs. George Routledge 
& Sons, London, and Messrs. E. P. Button & 
Co., New York. 

A ST. EDMUND PENNY . . . . -154 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins in 

the British Museum, Vol. I, Plate XVII. 
Memorial Coinage of St. Edmund struck in 

East Anglia. 

halfden's OR healfdene's coin . . .154 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins in 
the British Museum. Vol. II, Page xxxiv. 

HEAD OF JOHANNES SCOTUS ERIGENA OVER THE 
DOOR OF HALL AT BRASENOSE COLLEGE, 
OXFORD ...... 154 

From Wise's Asser, 1722. 

Also figured in Sir John Spelman's ^Ifredi 

Magni Vita, 1678, the Latin translation of 

The Life of Alfred the Great. 

THE ISLE OF ATHELNEY . . . . 162 

From a drawing by Alfred A. Clarke in The 
Alfred Jewel, by Rev. John Earle. 



Illustrations xi 

FACING 

PAGE 

KING Alfred's fort, or boroughmump, 

BOROUGHBRIDGE, NEAR ATHELNEY, SHOW- 
ING LINES OF FORTIFICATION . . . 170 

Photo, Dawkes & Partridge. 

THE WHITE HORSE ON BRATTON HILL, NEAR 

WESTBURY, WILTS . . , . . I76 

Photo, F. F. & Co. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON FONT AT ALLER, SOMERSET 1 78 

From Snell's Memorials of Old Somerset. 

MAP OF THE SUGGESTED WILTS AND SOMERSET 

EDINGTON CAMPAIGNS . . . . I96 

From the Saga Book of the Viking Club. 

Alfred's tower, stourton .... 220 

From CoUinson's Somerset, Vol. II, pp. 264-265. 
Built by Henry Hoare, about 1722, near the 
probable site of "Egbert's Stone." 

THE ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH, BRADFORD-ON- 

AVON — (exterior) .... 232 

Photo, F. F. & Co. 

anglo-saxon church, bradford-on-avon — 

(interior) ...... 248 

Photo, F. F. & Co. 

ANGEL IN THE ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH, BRADFORD- 
ON-AVON ...... 260 

Photo, Wilkinson, Trowbridge. 

GREENSTEAD CHURCH, ESSEX, AS IT WAS IN 1 748 278 

From Traill's Social England, Vol. I. 
Attributed to nth century. 



xii Illustrations 



FACING 
PAGE 



A PAGE OF THE CODEX AUREUS, WITH ANGLO- 
SAXON INSCRIPTIONS IN THE MARGIN . 298 

From'Westwood's Facsimiles of Min. and Orna- 
ments 0/ Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS. Plate II. 

THE WALLINGFORD SWORD SHOWING SYMBOLS 

OF FOUR EVANGELISTS .... 3OO 
In the Anglo-Saxon Art Collection of the Ash- 
molean Museum, Oxford. 

THE ALFRED JEWEL IN THE ANGLO-SAXON ART 
COLLECTION OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, 
OXFORD ...... 304 

THE ROACHSMITH " OUCHE " OR BROOCH. . 306 

From ArchcBologia, Vol. XXIX, Plate X, p. 70. 

THE MINSTER LOVEL JEWEL (fULL SIZE) . 306 

In the Anglo-Saxon Art Collection of the Ash- 
molean Museum, Oxford. 

SPECIMENS OF IRISH AND ANGLO-SAXON METAL 

WORK . . . . . . . 308 

From Notes and Examples of Late Anglo-Saxon 
Metal Work, by E. Thurlow Leeds, B.A., F.S.A. 

By Courtesy of the Editor of The Annals of 
ArchcBology and Anthropology. 

COINS ........ 318 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins 
in the British Museum. Vol. II, Plate V, Nos. 
3.8, II. 

COINS . . . . . . . . 318 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins 
in the British Museum. Vol. II, Plate IV, 
Nos. 7, 8, 13. 



Illustrations xiii 

FACING 

PAGE 

A PAGE OF THE MS. OF THE " PARKER " ANGLO- 
SAXON CHRONICLE ..... 332 

From MS. 173 in the Library of Corpus Christi 
College, Cambridge. 

A PAGE OF THE MS. OF THE " PARKER " ANGLO- 
SAXON CHRONICLE ..... 334 

From MS. 173 in the Library of Corpus Christi 
College, Cambridge. 

a page from the " worcester " ms. of 
Alfred's "pastoral care" in the bod- 
leian library, oxford . . . 344 

From Skeat's Twelve Facsimiles of Old English 
Manuscripts. 

A PAGE FROM THE OLDEST MS. OF KING ALFRED'S 

OROSIUS ...... 352 

By courtesy of the New Palasographical Society. 
Library of Lord ToUemache, Helmingham Hall, 

Suffolk. Probably late 9th or early loth 

century. 

COINS. CNUT (gUTHRED) AND SIEFRED . . 368 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins 
in the British Museum. Vol. I, Plate XXV, 
No. 13. 

COINS . 368 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins 
in the British Museum. 

Vol. II, Plate VI, Nos. i and 18. Plate V, 
No. 13. 

THE STATUE OF ALFRED THE GREAT AT WIN- 
CHESTER ...... 414 

Imprint F, F. & Co. 

By Hamo Thornycroft, R. A. 



xiv Illustrations 



FACING 
PAGE 



THE ALFRED MEDAL OF I9OI. OBVERSE AND 

REVERSE ...... 422 

From Bowker's Millenary of King Alfred. 

THE HEAD OF ALFRED OVER THE DOOR OF THE 

HALL OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD . 432 

From Wise's Asser, 1722. Also figured in 
Spelman's ^Ifredi Magni Vita, 1678. 

A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY PORTRAIT OF ALFRED 448 

From MS. 26 in the Library of Corpus Christi 

College, Cambridge. 
Matthasi Paris Chronica Maioral, p. 129. 

A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY PORTRAIT OF ALFRED 452 

From MS. 16 in the Library of Corpus Christi 

College, Cambridge. 
Matthaei Paris Chronica Maiora II, preliminary 

quire iii a. 

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY REPRESENTATION OF 

THE STORY OF ALFRED AND THE CAKES . 456 

From the Roxburghe Ballads, 1880. 

IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF ALFRED . . . 458 

From Hearne's Edition of Sir John Spelman's 
Life of Mlfred the Great, 1709; the first printed 
edition of the English MS. Drawn and 
engraved by Burghers. 

IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF ALFRED . . . 460 

From the Frontispiece in Wise's Asser, 1722. 
Engraved by Vertue. 

THE ARMS OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD . 462 



Illustrations xv 



FACING 
PAGE 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BUST OF ALFRED THE 

GREAT IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 464 

Photograph by permission. 

Presented in 1771 by Jacob, Viscount Folke- 
stone, in honour of the mythical founder of 
the College. 

Alfred's monument at athelney . . 466 

Photo, Dawkes & Partridge. 
genealogical table . . . . At End 



ALFRED THE TRUTHTELLER 



CHAPTER I 

EUROPE BEFORE ALFRED THE GREAT 

" TN the year of our. Lord's Incarnation 849 light 
-■• rose out of darkness. Alfred, King of the 
English, was born in the royal 'vill' [villa regia] 
which is called Wanetinge [Wantage]." 

To later historians, as to the early chronicler 
who wrote these words, King Alfred has appeared 
as a phenomenon to be wondered at rather than 
to be understood, a lonely light shining in the 
midst of an impenetrable darkness. 

The ninth century, the time of the break-up of 
the Empire of Charles the Great, and of the sys- 
tematic plunder-raids of the Northmen, is by 
common consent included among the "Dark Ages " 
of mediaeval history. Too near to the modem 
world for the dignity of the classic past, too far 
removed for the vivid interest of contemporary 
politics, it presents at first sight little but a dreary- 
vista of civil wars and viking ravages in the realm 
of action, of childish credulity and gross supersti- 



2 Alfred the Truthteller 

tion in the realm of thought. It falls between the 
heroic period of Chariemagne and the romantic era 
of the Crusades, before the great days of Empire 
and Papacy, of monasticism and feudalism, a 
barren waste of years, in which the figure of 
Alfred, the perfect king, stands out in brilliant 
relief against a shadowy background of barbaric 
ignorance and violence. 

Yet when the shadows are faced they flee away, 
and the darkness grows luminous, a summer night 
full of vague promise and suggestion and the faint 
stirrings of life, haunted by memories of the day 
that is gone, and by dreams of the coming dawn. 

The true significance of the Middle Ages lies, 
indeed, in the very fact of their "middleness." If 
they were the ancestors of a historic future, they 
were also the heirs of a "storied past," the inheri- 
tors of high traditions, Hellenic, Latin, and Hebraic. 
Behind them lay the philosophy and art of Greece, 
the law and imperial statecraft of Rome, the stem 
monotheism of the Jewish dispensation, with its 
fervour of militant faith, and its splendid oriental 
poetry and prophecy. 

Mediasval Christendom was built up out of the 
ruins of older civilisations, and thinkers and writ- 
ers borrowed their material from Grasco-Latin and 
Judaic antiquity as naturally as architects and 
sculptors used the columns and stones of pagan 
Rome in constructing Christian basilicas. West- 
ern learning and Eastern fancy, legend and myth, 
superstition and mystic devotion, the fascination 



Europe before Alfred 3 

of the unknown and the dread of the infinite, all 
went to the making of the subtle atmosphere of 
thought that softened the harshness of the rude 
practical activities of mediaeval life. 

Nor were these classic and oriental forms the 
mere dry bones of a dead society. They came to 
the medieval world filled with living force, 
moulded and transfigured by Christian idealism. 
They gained power and meaning from that hope 
of a future life and that sense of the mystery of the 
imseen which, however dimly apprehended, served 
to lift the men and women of the Middle Ages 
above their material surroundings, to quicken 
their imagination, and to kindle their awe and 
wonder. The history of the past became symbolic 
of a spiritual future. It was a Christian Empire 
of which St. Augustine wrote, which Charles the 
Great tried to revive in visible form. St. Augus- 
tine's "City of God" was at once "golden Rome, 
head and glory of the world" {Roma caput mundi, 
mundi decus, aurea Roma), and "Jerusalem the 
Golden" {Urhs Sion Aurea), "the New Jerusalem 
coming down from God out of heaven." 

Only by realising the theocratic character of 
mediaeval society, and the strength of religious 
and ecclesiastical influences, can mediaeval history 
be understood. The Church was the true world- 
state, the kingdom of God upon earth, a king- 
dom ruled by two powers, the "holy authority of 
the Popes" and the subordinate, but divinely in- 
stituted, authority of Monarchy. The common 



4 Alfred the Truthteller 

aims and sympathies of the Christian faith held 
together jarring tribes and races in some kind 
of pohtical unity, in the imperium. christianum, 
Christendom, the community of all Christian 
people. 

Though the phrase "the Ages of Faith" has 
been used to invest the Middle Ages with an unreal 
glamour, there can be no doubt that mediaeval 
society was peculiarly alive to emotional and 
spiritual appeals, and the importance can hardly 
be overrated of that chain of events which brought 
the Western and Northern nations at a critical 
stage in their development under the sway of the 
complex religious system of Catholicism. 

The marvellous organisation of the Catholic 
Church, with its two branches. Eastern and West- 
em, had gathered up into itself the accumulated 
wisdom of three great civilisations. Jewish and 
oriental in origin, it absorbed much of what sur- 
vived of Greek philosophy, of Roman law and po- 
litical theory, welded this heterogeneous material 
into a more or less coherent body of Christian 
theology, and, through the writings of the Fathers, 
made that theology the common property of the 
educated world. 

This meant that the heathen tribesmen who 
derived their Christianity from Rome learnt their 
classical lessons in an ecclesiastical school, with 
ecclesiastical reservations and expansions, while 
the sacred books of the Old and New Testament 
came to them overlaid with a mass of allegorical 



Europe before Alfred 5 

interpretation which recalls early nineteenth-cen- 
tury methods of Scriptural exposition. But it 
meant also that they caught a faint reflection of 
the beauty of Greek thought and the glow of 
Eastern passion, and that they, the barbarian 
conquerors of Rome, received those ideas of polit- 
ical unity, of authority and disciplined order, 
which were among the best fruits of Roman Im- 
perialism. Above all, Latin Christianity, by its 
very precision and formalism, gave definition to 
vague yearnings, and laid down clear rules of faith 
and conduct, a "way of righteousness." It taught 
the pagan world the virtues of self-control, of 
mercy and pity, and sacrifice for a cause, and 
brightened the routine of everyday life by the 
ceremonies of a stately ritual. 

At the same time, the influence of Christianity, 
great as it was, must not be exaggerated. Behind 
and beneath the imposing fabric of Catholicism, 
the older beliefs lingered, as, indeed, they linger 
still. Christian observances were in many cases 
the mere setting for pagan rites; primitive su- 
perstitions were absorbed into orthodox Catholic 
doctrine, or sank into the magic and witchcraft 
which the Church persistently but ineffectually 
condemned. The northern races, moreover, had 
their own fine traditions of loyalty and courage, 
their own delicate artistic feeling, and a rich store 
of imaginative legend, myth, and folk-song. 
Christianity assimilated this native culture without 
destroying it, but not without vitally affecting its 



6 Alfred the Truthteller 

development. Arrested in its natural growth, it 
entered into combination with Christian elements, 
to form in course of time a new civilisation in 
the West, which should be neither barbarian nor 
Roman, neither heathen nor altogether Christian, 
but truly Catholic in its reconciliation of opposing 
forces. 

A long period of experiment lay between the 
Empire of the Caesars and its mediaeval successor, 
the "Roman Empire of the German Nation," and 
both the dulness and the interest of the ninth 
century spring from the fact that it falls within 
this time of transition. It is dull because the 
men of the ninth century, bound by the spell of 
the past, did not yet dare to be themselves, and 
copied where they might have created. Their 
theories, borrowed from more advanced civilisa- 
tions, were somewhat forced and artificial. Their 
ideals had but little bearing on the realities of their 
daily experience. They were inarticulate, too, un- 
able fitly to express the thoughts that "quivered 
on their lips," and the difficulty of entering into 
their inner life is enhanced by the scantiness and 
poverty of the records they have left. 

Yet this immaturity has a charm of its own, for 
it means infinite possibilities of growth and de- 
velopment. The ninth century, with all its crud- 
ity, is interesting for its promise of a great future, 
for its youthful extravagance and hopefulness, for 
its strange inconsistencies and eager ambitions, 
for its curious blending of idealism with materi- 



Europe before Alfred 7 

alism. More especially it is interesting for the 
strength of the theocratic and ecclesiastical factors 
in the organisation of society, and for the part 
which they played in secular politics, both in the 
West and in the East. 

The great historian Von Ranke saw the distin- 
guishing characteristics of the ninth century in 
the contrast between the two monotheistic the- 
ocracies, Christendom and Islam, and in their 
gradual victory over the declining forces of ancient 
heathendom. In the East, as in the West, a world- 
state embodying a creed had arisen, and mediaeval 
Mohammedanism proved a formidable rival to 
mediaeval Christianity. 

The ceaseless struggle between East and West 
became, in the Middle Ages, a holy war against 
the enemies of Christ and his Church, and political 
quarrels were fought out over ecclesiastical ques- 
tions. The separation of the Western from the 
Eastern Empire was intimately connected with 
the separation of the Latin and Greek churches. 
Even travel and exploration assumed the religious 
aspect of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, or to 
Rome, the "queen of the world," the visible seat 
and centre of the authority of the Church of the 
West. 

The world itself, to ninth-century eyes, might 
seem to be divided into Christendom and "He- 
thenesse." Within the Christian pale were the 
Empires of the East and West, both claiming to 
be the orthodox descendants and representatives 



8 Alfred the Truthteller 

of the Empire of Constantine the Great. The 
Eastern or Byzantine Emperors ruled from Con- 
stantinople, the "New Rome," over restricted but 
still extensive territories in Southern Italy and 
Sicily, in the Balkan Peninsula and the Pelopon- 
nesus, and in Asia Minor. Under the supremacy 
of the newly revived Western Empire were gathered 
the future kingdoms of France and Burgundy, of 
Germany and Italy, while England and Ireland, 
politically isolated, were yet members of the 
Christian community. Outside that community 
lay the realm of heathendom, the conquests of 
Islam, and the still unconquered fastnesses of more 
primitive beliefs. 

Islam, like Christendom, had fallen into two 
divisions, differing in creed and in politics. The 
Emirate of Cordova encroached on the boundary 
of the Western Empire south of the Pyrenees. 
The Caliphate of Bagdad threatened the Byzan- 
tine frontier in Asia Minor and held Jerusalem 
and the holy places of Syria. Between the two, 
the Mediterranean Sea swarmed with Saracen 
pirates, Moslem adventurers and freebooters, who 
lived by the plunder of Christians. 

Beyond the Christian and Mohammedan Em- 
pires, again, stretched a fringe of dim, mysteri- 
ous barbarism, full, to the mediaeval imagination, 
of dreadful shapes and monstrous creations: 

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders. 



Europe before Alfred 9 

Fabulous India and "far Cathay," the wild 
Tartar savagery of the remote North-East, with 
the mist-enshrouded north-western lands of Slav 
and Scandinavian paganism, to ultima Thule, and 
the "sluggish waveless sea which men believe to 
be the girdle of the earth," contributed their 
marvels to the store of travellers' tales which 
gathered about the borders of the known world. 

It was from the heathen North that, as the 
eighth century drew to a close, a new element 
entered into the political and social life of Western 
Europe with the beginning of the "Viking Age." 
When "the first ships of the Danish men" ap- 
peared off the coasts of England and Ireland, curi- 
osity and astonishment mingled with the terror 
which they aroused. The West-Saxon "reeve" 
(gerefa) whose death at the hands of the Northern 
pirates the English Chronicle records "knew not 
what they were. ' ' A later version of the same story 
makes him take them for merchants. "Never," 
wrote Alcuin of the sacking of Lindisfame by the 
Northmen in 793, "could such a voyage have been 
thought possible." The Irish called the invaders 
Gain or strangers. 

Some four generations later, when the "Viking 
Age" proper ended with the cession of Normandy 
to RoUo, the "pirate duke," the "strangers" had 
become a recognised and important branch of the 
western family of European nations. At the 
opening of the tenth century, kings and chiefs of 
Scandinavian race ruled over Russia and the 



lo Alfred the Truthteller 

greater part of England; Scandinavian colonists 
lined the shores of the Irish Sea and occupied the 
islands of the eastern Atlantic from the Hebrides 
to the Faroes; Scandinavian explorers had passed 
the Straits of Gibraltar in the South, and had 
attacked Iceland and discovered Greenland in the 
far North- West. 

If from one point of view the viking expeditions 
recall the pirate raids of the Saracens in the Medi- 
terranean, from another they seem to be a continu- 
ation or revival of the tribal migrations of an 
earlier age. As in the fourth and fifth centuries 
the dwellers by the North Sea, Angles and Saxons, 
Jutes and Frisians, went forth to conquer and settle 
on the coast of Gaul and in the distant province 
of Roman Britain, so, more than three hundred 
years later, the warships of Danes and Goths, 
Norwegians and Swedes, sailed out from the Baltic 
lands to plunder the kingdoms of the West. 

What is really remarkable about the expansion 
of the Scandinavian peoples in the eighth and 
ninth centuries is not so much the novelty of the 
movement as its magnitude, its extent, and its 
persistence. These Northern adventurers passed 
down the English Channel, and through the 
Straits of Gibraltar to the Mediterranean, or 
struck across the ocean to Scotland and the West- 
ern Isles, and so by the Irish Sea to St. George's 
Channel, or rounded the North Cape and explored 
the White Sea and the haunts of Finn and Lapp, 
or followed the "East-way," to Russia or "Gar- 



Europe before Alfred ii 

dariki," and on to " Micklegarth, " the "great city" 
of New Rome. 

Scandinavia had, indeed, been the home of a 
seafaring race from the dawn of authentic history, 
"rich," as Tacitus noted, "in ships, in arms, and 
in men." The long Hne of broken, island-fringed 
coast, deeply indented with bays and fiords, the 
narrow straits and sounds, the dark pine-forests, 
vast lakes, and rugged, mountains of the interior, 
had nourished a vigorous population of stalwart 
dalesmen and hunters, fishermen, sailors, and 
traders, a stout-hearted, independent people, full 
of vitality, practical sagacity, and shrewd homely 
mother- wit. This was the material out of which 
the perils and hazards of a life of piracy fashioned 
a type as characteristic as the Elizabethan "sea- 
dog," the "sea-king" who "ruled over men, but 
had no lands," who "never slept beneath sooty 
roof -beams, and never drank at the ingle-nook." 
These early buccaneers, like their sixteenth-cen- 
tury descendants, looked westward for their El 
Dorado, and from their exploits, and the daring 
ventures and stirring incidents of their roving life, 
sprang both the "fighting faith " of the " Walhalla " 
mythology, as distinct from the primitive beliefs 
of the Germanic races, and the later literature of 
Eddas and Sagas. 

It is partly to the heroic and romantic nature 
of the viking movement that the difficulty of 
accounting for it is due. Not only are trustworthy 
records scanty, but the few that remain have been 



12 Alfred the Truthteller 

distorted by terror, or transformed by poetic 
imagination: the terror that added a clause to 
the Litany: "From the fury of the Northmen, 
good Lord, deliver us"; the imagination which 
produced the viking cradle-song: "My mother 
said they should buy me a boat and fair oars. 
. . . And so wend to the haven, and cut down 
man after man"; or the triumphant death-chant 
of Ragnar Lodbrok in the serpent-pit: "We hewed 
with the brand ! I . . . have fought fifty pitched 
battles and one. . . . Laughing I will die." 

With the contemporary English and Prankish 
chroniclers, the feeling of horror was uppermost. 
They saw in the incursions of the heathen pirates 
a judgment of God, a punishment for sin, a fulfil- 
ment of prophecy. The vikings were "the evil 
that was to break forth out of the North," foxes 
that destroyed the chosen vine, wolves that de- 
voured the fold, waters that flooded the land. 
Above all, they were "heathen men," "Gentiles," 
"a pagan folk." 

To the Scandinavian poets or saga-tellers, writ- 
ing after the event, perhaps in the Western Isles, 
or in the new colony of Iceland, the element of 
romance was predominant. They emphasised 
the personal note, and made the early raids, like 
the later invasions, the work of individual heroes, 
such half-mythical war-leaders as Ragnar Lodbrok 
and Ivar the Boneless. 

Modem historians, again, have sought to trace 
the resumption of western migration to economic 




THE HORSED VIKINGS 

(National Museum, Stockholm) 

From Traill's Social Englana, Vol. I. 



Europe before Alfred 13 

or political circimistances : — over-population, social 
unrest, the revolt of a spirited people against the 
growing restrictions of settled government. 

Though there is truth in all these theories, and 
fate, desire, and necessity may each have had a 
share in bringing about the viking movement, its 
immediate cause, as Lappenberg suggested long 
ago, was probably the Saxon war of Charles the 
Great, which brought the Danes face to face with 
the Franks and revealed the riches of Christian 
civilisation to the Northern plunderers, while the 
break-up of the Western Empire under Charles the 
Great's unworthy successors gave them an oppor- 
tunity of which they were not slow to take ad- 
vantage. It is at least certain that the first clearly 
recorded viking raids on the coasts of England, 
Ireland, and Frisia coincide with that last quarter 
of the eighth century when the frontier of Christen- 
dom was being gradually pushed northwards, and 
the great King of the Franks was putting the 
crowning touches to the fabric of empire. In 810 
the murder of Godfred, king of the Danes, the 
protector of the fugitive Saxon chief Widukind, 
alone prevented a serious war between Franks 
and Northmen. Charles the Great made peace 
with Godfred's successor, but the closing years of 
his life were darkened by fears for the future, and 
he gave anxious thought to the strengthening of 
the naval defences of the Empire. 

The famous tale of the Emperor weeping for the 
troubles that were coming on his descendants, as 



14 Alfred the Truthteller 

he watched the viking pirate-ships in the Medi- 
terranean, embodies a historic truth. Christian 
imperiaHsm was about to meet pagan tribaHsm 
in a desperate and prolonged struggle. The 
ninth century was to be a time of storm and stress 
which has been compared to the "Doom of the 
Gods" of Northern prophecy, "an age of axes, 
an age of swords ... an age of wolves." A new 
society would eventually emerge from this clash 
of conflicting forces, even as when the "Doom" 
had passed, a new earth rose out of the deep, but 
this was not to be till a century of war and piracy 
had made the "viking" or "wicing" — a word 
like "Saracen" of uncertain derivation, but of 
dread import — a name of terror throughout 
Western Christendom. 

When, in 814, Charles, the " Great and Orthodox 
Emperor," was laid to rest in the cathedral at 
Aachen, the reign of Chaos seemed about to return. 
His son and successor, Louis the Pious, though 
accomplished and devout, was too weak a man for 
the heavy task imposed upon him. A pathetic 
figure, at odds with his own children and out of 
touch with the tendencies of the time, he drifted 
helplessly through a shifting scene of change and 
chance, of rebellion within and invasion from with- 
out. Northmen, Slavs, and Saracens beat against 
the boundaries of the Empire: discontented sons 
and ambitious vassals stirred up strife at home. 

Yet the very dissensions and divisions of actual 
society served to emphasise the old ideals of peace 



Europe before Alfred 15 

and unity. It was one of the gravest charges 
against Louis the Pious that he had failed to carry 
on the work of his father, the Rex PaciUcus, and 
had brought shame and distress upon the Empire. 
Great principles of conduct and government rose 
like giant shapes out of the general welter and 
confusion, only to fall back again into darkness. 
Men clung to the dream of political and religious 
unity, as they clung to the memory of the golden 
days of Charles the Great. 

The life of Charles had been a concrete mani- 
festation of typical Christian kingship, all the 
more attractive and comprehensible for its bar- 
baric setting. Henceforth the sovereigns of West- 
ern Europe would model themselves, consciously 
or unconsciously, after this pattern, and in so 
doing they would carry on a still older tradition. 
Charles the Great might well stand for the mediaeval 
conception of the "Happy Emperor" of his favour- 
ite book, St. Augustine's City of God, and that 
description of a Christian monarch, enforced by 
the authority of Roman jurists and of Fathers of 
the Church, and popularised by the legendary 
fame of "Charlemagne," became the ideal of all 
the best statesmen of the Middle Ages. 

St. Augustine had taught that the happiness 
of the ruler lay in just rule, in the fear of God, and 
in the love of the heavenly kingdom. He had 
spiritualised the earthly Rome by linking it with 
the thought of the "City of God." Later political 
philosophers laid stress on the official character of 



i6 Alfred the Truthteller 

the imperial and royal functions, on the duties 
and obligations that attended empire and king- 
ship, and on the divine origin of those duties, and 
their intimate connection with the Church and 
the Catholic faith. 

The continuity of ecclesiastical tradition ex- 
plains the continuity of mediseval political theory. 
It explains also the growing power and influence 
of the Church, the representative of a consistent 
purpose and a definite moral standard in a world 
of capricious impulses and unrestrained license. 
Rome was still the symbol of law and order and 
civilisation for the nations of Western Christendom, 
but, by an insensible transition, republican and 
imperial Rome had given place to the city of St. 
Peter as the goal of their hopes and ambitions. 
The real strength of the Papacy lay in the spiritual 
nature of its claim to supremacy, which enabled 
it to rise superior to the accidents of fortune, even 
when Rome itself was convulsed by sedition. 
Leo III., the Pope from whom on Christmas Day, 
800, Charles the Great had received the imperial 
crown, died in 816, discredited, and hated by the 
Romans, who had risen in rebellion against him. 
His four immediate successors had short and in- 
glorious reigns, and not till Gregory IV. mounted 
the papal throne in 827 did the Church find its 
opportunity in the weakness and disruption of the 
Empire. 

The first few years after the accession of Louis 
the Pious had not been without promise. Friendly 



Europe before Alfred 17 

negotiation, mission-work, and politic intervention 
in the dynastic complications of Denmark marked 
his relations with the Northern nations. The 
Slavs on the eastern frontier and the Saracens of 
Spain were held in check, in spite of frequent 
revolts, and the imperial authority was main- 
tained in Italy. 

The Emperor's first fatal mistake was made in 
819, when he took as his second wife the beautiful 
and gifted Judith of Bavaria, of whom it was said 
that she governed the kingdom, and turned all 
men's hearts to her will. The birth, in 823, of 
Judith's son, the future Charles the Bald, was the 
opening scene of an often-repeated tragedy, the 
struggle between a scheming stepmother and 
the jealous children of the first marriage. Ambi- 
tious courtiers and prelates fanned the flame, 
until the smouldering intrigues in the Prankish 
court flared up into civil war. 

Deprived of authority and again reinstated, in 
the year 833 Louis the Pious found himself opposed 
by the combined forces of his three elder sons, 
Lothair, Pepin, and Louis "the German." On 
the Alsatian "Field of Lies" {Campus mentitus), a 
place of lasting shame for the faith there broken, 
the Emperor was deserted by his army and adher- 
ents, and forced not only to resign his throne, but 
to do public penance at Soissons, and confess that 
he had imworthily administered the office com- 
mitted to him. Though Pepin and Louis, sup- 
ported by popular sympathy, restored their father 



i8 Alfred the Truthteller 

to power in 834, he never recovered his former 
position, and in 839, after the death of Pepin, 
the Empire was divided between Lothair and 
Charles, leaving only Bavaria to Louis the Ger- 
man, and the imperial title and overlordship to 
the old Emperor. 

In 840 Louis the Pious died, esteeming himself 
wretched to end his days in misfortune, yet griev- 
ing less for his own departure than for the un- 
certain future of his people. With his death the 
unity of the Empire vanished, and the heritage of 
Charles the Great was torn asunder by his grand- 
sons. At the battle of Fontanet {Fontenoy-en- 
Puisaye), in 841, Lothair was defeated by his 
brothers with great slaughter, and two years later 
the treaty of Verdun set the seal to the dismem- 
berment of the Empire and traced the first 
faint outlines of mediceval Italy, Germany, and 
France. 

Lothair, as Emperor, ruled over Italy and a 
long, narrow strip of territory stretching from the 
mouth of the Rhine to the mouth of the Rhone, 
and including the two capitals of Rome and Aachen, 
a "middle kingdom," which took from him the 
name of Lotharingia. Louis received the eastern 
kingdom, the land of the East Franks, the later 
Germany. To Charles the Bald fell the kingdom 
of the West Franks, la douce France. A clear- 
sighted contemporary poet, mourning the triple 
partition of the great united Empire, and the 
advent of lawless anarchy, noted as a sign of the 



Europe before Alfred 19 

times the division of the sovereign power among 
petty princes: 

A kinglet in place of a king: for one realm, broken 

fragments of kingdoms. 
{Pro rege est regulus, pro regno, fragmina regni.) 

The centralised imperialism of Charies the 
Great had, in fact, broken up from its own weight, 
never to be revived in its integrity. The political 
system which was destined to replace it, a "feudal 
system" of administrative landlordism, was, per- 
haps, better suited to the needs of a period when 
local and territorial influences were strong, com- 
munication between different parts of the country 
was difficult, and the demand for military protec- 
tion was urgent. Under the pressure of external 
invasion and internal necessity, the fragmina 
regni split into still smaller units, principalities, 
lordships, "fiefs," of all kinds and sizes, little 
states within a state. With this process of de- 
volution and decentralisation went specialisation 
of function, and the consequent differentiation of 
organs in the body politic. A territorial, localised, 
military society would inevitably develop on 
aristocratic lines. The governing, fighting class 
rose, the dependent agricultural class sank, in the 
social scale. The "strong man armed" kept the 
city. The weak man "bowed his shoulder to 
bear, and became a servant unto tribute," sacri- 
ficing freedom for the sake of security. "In the 
time of Charles the Great," wrote the chronicler 



20 Alfred the Truthteller 

Nithard, who fought at Fontanet, "there was 
general peace and concord, now . . . dissensions 
and strife appear everywhere. Then there was 
universal abundance and joy, now there is universal 
poverty and sadness." 

While the Empire was rent by internecine wars 
and private feuds, the monastic annalists were 
recording with increasing frequency the raids of 
Northmen and Saracens. Though in 826 Harold 
of Denmark had submitted to Christian baptism, 
he was driven from power in the following year, 
and from 834 onwards the Flemish and Frankish 
coasts were constantly harried by "pirate-ships," 
men and women were killed or carried into captiv- 
ity, convents were sacked, and tribute was exacted. 
Louis the Pious made peace with the new Danish 
King, Horik, and took measures for the defence of 
the coast, but the troubles that followed his death 
incited the pirates to fresh efforts. 

In 841 they sailed up the Seine and plundered 
Rouen, and in 843 they were in the Loire, ravaging 
Nantes. The battle of Fontanet had weakened 
the Franks, though the chroniclers doubtless exag- 
gerate when they say that their whole strength 
was exhausted so that they could no longer defend 
their frontiers. As the eleventh-century Roman 
de Rou has it : 

L^ pdrit de France la fleur, 

Et de Barons tout le meilleur; 

Ainsi trouv^rent Paiens terra 

Vide de gens bonne a conquerre [conquerir]. 



Europe before Alfred 21 

Still, it is not without significance that when, two 
years after the treaty of Verdun, in 845, Paris was 
besieged by the Danes under the viking Ragnar, 
Charles the Bald could only save his capital by 
the payment of tribute, a Danegeld of "many a 
thousand- weight of gold and silver." Hamburg 
was destroyed in the same year, and the warships 
of the Northmen were soon a familiar sight in all 
the rivers of western Flanders, France, and Spain, 
from the Elbe to the Ebro. Nor was Italy in 
much better case. Before his death in 844, Pope 
Gregory IV. had seen the conquest of Sicily by 
the Saracens, and during the brief pontificate of 
his successor Sergius II. Saracen pirates pushed 
up the Tiber, sacked the Roman churches of St. 
Peter and St. Paul, and rifled the sacred tombs 
of the Apostles. Though the defeat of another 
Saracen fleet off Ostia in 849 gave Rome an im- 
mediate respite, Leo IV., who became Pope in 847, 
realised that the storm had only blown over, and 
set himself to restore the walls of the city, and to 
protect the Vatican quarter and St. Peter's by 
fortifications. 

The second half of the ninth century, which 
almost exactly covers the life of King Alfred of 
England, opened with gloomy prospects, with 
wars and rumours of war, with famine and rebel- 
lion, "dissensions of princes and ravages of the 
heathen," and all the restless turmoil of a transi- 
tional period. 



CHAPTER II 

ENGLAND BEFORE ALFRED THE GREAT 

BEYOND the Empire of Charlemagne, the 
island of Britain, a world within itself, lay 
in the open sea, with Ireland at its side. Remote 
and isolated in position, cold and sunless in climate, 
these northern isles were yet fertile enough to 
tempt the invader, and successive waves of popu- 
lation had swept across them from the days of the 
prehistoric tribesmen whose handiwork remains 
in barrow and dolmen, in stone circle and monolith, 
whose memory may, perhaps, linger in legends of 
dwarf and gnome and brownie. 

The Celts, — Goidels, Brythons, or Belgce, — who 
conquered the earlier races, were still a power 
in the land when Alfred was king, not only in 
distant Ireland and Scotland, in the hills of Cum- 
bria and Wales, and the moors of the west, but in 
the heart of England itself, through intermarriage 
and survival, through the obscure persistence of 
peasant stocks, or through the subtle influence of 
custom and tradition. On the far-reaching and 
thorough Celtic settlement had supervened an 
incomplete and temporary Roman occupation, 



England before Alfred 23 

followed by a lasting but partial Germanic colo- 
nisation. A political line had been drawn in the 
first four centuries of the Christian era between 
the Roman province of Britain and the barbarous 
north behind the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus. 
In the fifth and sixth centuries a racial line had 
further separated "Welshman" from "Saxon." 
Later still, the bond of common Christianity had 
done something to obliterate these distinctions. 
Bede, writing at the beginning of the eighth cent- 
ury, could describe the five tongues of Britain as 
English, Welsh, Scottish, "Pictish," and "Book- 
Latin," the universal language of learning and 
the Church, of civilisation and of Rome. 

While on the Continent the nations of mediaeval 
Europe were slowly rising from the ruins of the 
Roman Empire, a number of tribal kingdoms were 
struggling into existence in that part of Britain 
which had been conquered by Germanic invaders. 
Whether the process of political development was 
one of aggregation or of devolution is matter of 
dispute. War bands may have grown into tribal 
kingdoms, and many small kingdoms may have 
coalesced into a few large states, or again, large 
but thinly populated states may have split up into 
small kingdoms, communities within a community. 
In any case, the result was the formation of a suc- 
cession of loosely co-ordinated federations, under 
over-kings whose authority, dignified by Bede 
with the name of imperium, qualified them in the 
Anglo-Saxon vernacular for the title of Bretwalda, 



24 Alfred the Truthteller 

"ruler of Britain." The sixth and seventh cent- 
uries saw the kings of Sussex, Wessex, Kent, East 
Anglia and Northumbria reach such a position in 
turn. Oswy of Northumbria, who died in 671, was 
the seventh Bretwalda. The eighth, according to 
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was the West-Saxon 
Egbert, King Alfred's grandfather, more than 
a hundred and thirty years later. 

With Egbert's rise to power in the early ninth 
century, and the almost coincident appearance of 
the Danes off the British coasts, a new era began 
in English history. The ability and energy of the 
West-Saxon king gave Wessex the supremacy over 
all England. The Danish wars made that su- 
premacy permanent. Consolidated by a common 
danger, stimulated by the enthusiasm of a holy 
war against the enemies of the Christian faith, 
and organised by the genius of a dynasty of great 
rulers, the West-Saxon kingdom stood forth as the 
leader among the petty English and Anglo-Danish 
states, until the very name of "Wessex," merged 
in the wider "England," survived only as an 
archaism or a historical tradition. 

Yet the political unity of England was no sudden 
growth. To the men of the ninth century local 
interests were far stronger than national patriotism. 
They were West-Saxons or Mercians first, and 
Englishmen only by contrast with Welsh or Scots, 
Danes or Franks. King Alfred himself was a 
Wessex man with Kentish antecedents, born in 
Berkshire, living nearly all his days south of 



England before Alfred 25 

Thames. Though when he died he could be 
styled "King of the Anglo-Saxons," or even 
"King over all Angle-kin," in 871, when he came 
to the throne, it was only the "kingdom of the 
West-Saxons," with Kent and its dependencies, 
over which he ruled. The sights and sounds of the 
South and West of England, the laws and customs, 
the legends and folk-lore of the southern peoples, 
must have set their mark deeply on his mind and 
heart, as they were destined, through him, to in- 
fluence the whole course of the national develop- 
ment of England. 

At the opening of the ninth century, the king- 
dom of the West-Saxons, even with the under- 
kingdoms of Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, was 
but an insignificant principality, though rich 
and varied in natural resources. Bounded by the 
North Sea on the east, the Bristol Channel on the 
west, and the English Channel on the south, it 
stretched northward to the Thames valley, and 
included the modem counties of Essex, Kent 
Siirrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, with the plea- 
sant west country of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and 
Somersetshire, the half-subdued Devonshire, 
and the still British Cornwall. Whatever the 
dim beginnings of Wessex may have been, whether 
the original settlement of the GewisscE, or West- 
Saxons, was made from Southampton Water, or, 
as some modern scholars hold, from the Thames 
valley, by the year 800 their power centred in the 
country about the ancient Belgic and Roman city 



26 Alfred the Truthteller 

of Winchester {Venta Belgarum), the seat of a 
bishop and already venerated as a burying-place 
of kings. Behind Winchester, Roman roads 
struck up to the Hampshire Downs and the vale 
of Thames, and then westward to Bath, or east- 
ward to London and the Watling Street and the 
Continental route through Kent, by Rochester 
and Canterbury, to the port of Dover. South 
and west of the Kentish uplands and valleys lay 
the little kingdoms of Surrey and Sussex, crossed 
by the parallel ranges of the North Downs and 
South Downs, with the great forest of Andred, the 
Andredesweald, between them. Sussex and Surrey 
were probably colonised by tribes of Saxon stock, 
but Kent, the southern coast of Hampshire, and 
the Isle of Wight seem to have been conquered 
by men of Jutish blood, distinct in race, in speech, 
and in customs, a fact which was not without 
importance in later West-Saxon history. 

The reputed founders of the royal house of 
Wessex, Cerdic, who bears a British name, and 
his son Cynric, are figures as unsubstantial as 
Hengest and Horsa, the traditional leaders of the 
Jutish invasion of Kent. The earliest extant ver- 
sion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a Winchester 
book, naturally enough dwells on the exploits of 
these West-Saxon pioneers, and works the legends 
and tales that grew up round their names into a 
series of hopelessly contradictory annals. A more 
historical king of the West-Saxons is Ceawlin, son 
of Cynric, the second Bretwalda, the victor in that 



England before Alfred 27 

sixth-century battle of Deorham which gave the 
West-Saxons the Romano-British towns of Glou- 
cester, Bath, and Cirencester, and the surround- 
ing districts, and carried their power to the 
Bristol Channel. 

In the seventh century' the political supremacy 
passed to Kent, to East Anglia, and to Northum- 
bria, while Wessex, weakened by constant war, 
sank into a subordinate position. Not until 685 
did the southern kingdom once more rise into 
prominence under Ceadwalla, a descendant of 
Ceawlin, a Christian king with a Welsh name, who 
fought his way to the throne, reigned for three 
stormy years, conquered the Isle of Wight, ravaged 
Sussex and Kent, and then, in a fit of devout 
contrition, resigned his crown and went on pilgrim- 
age to Rome. He was succeeded by his kinsman 
Ine, one of the most noteworthy of the early West- 
Saxon kings. Before he, too, quitted the world 
to die in retirement at Rome, he had given Wessex 
that famous collection of "dooms" or customary 
laws, which was destined to be incorporated, after 
an interval of more than a century and a half, in 
the "code" of Alfred the Great. ^ Ine's abdica- 
tion in 726 was followed by a period of dissension 
and anarchy, and the West-Saxon kingdom, torn 
by internal strife, gradually became subject to 
Mercia, now rising to the height of its power un- 
der the strong rule of Ethelbald and his greater 
successor Offa. 

' Infra, Chapter VII., p. 208. 



28 Alfred the Truthteller 

By the second half of the eighth century Offa 
was practically supreme over all England south 
of Humber. Even when he died in 796, his son- 
in-law Beorhtric continued to govern Wessex as 
an under-kingdom of Mercia till his sudden death 
in 802. Then, if the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may 
be trusted, Egbert "took" the West- Saxon king- 
dom, not to relax his hold upon it until his own 
death thirty-seven years later, when he had added 
to his original dominions the kingdoms of Kent, 
Surrey, Sussex, Essex, Mercia, and East Anglia, 
and the nominal suzerainty over Northumbria. 

As the first ruler of a united England before 
the storm of Danish invasion tore asunder once 
more the ill-consolidated tribal kingdoms, as the 
grandfather of Alfred the Great, and the founder 
of the West-Saxon royal house, Egbert has won 
a fame which is hardly warranted by the sober 
testimony of fact. A few entries in the Win- 
chester Chronicle, a few charters, some coins, a 
doubtful genealogy, the attribution of the mys- 
terious title of Bretwalda, the records of victories 
which have left a faint echo in folk-song, these are 
all the traces that actually remain of a king of 
whom by the fifteenth century the story could 
be told that in the first year of his reign he held 
a Parliament at Winchester and with the consent 
of his people changed the name of his kingdom 
from Britain to England. 

The fragmentary annals of the period reveal, 
indeed, a scene of confusion in the tribal states 



England before Alfred 29 

of England which might well be utilised by a young 
man of ability for his own aggrandisement, and if, 
in the uncertainty of our knowledge, Egbert can 
hardly be called an adventurer, he was at least a 
pretender, with pretensions, apparently, to the 
thrones of both Kent and Wessex. The ancient 
West-Saxon royal genealogy traces Egbert's pater- 
nal ancestry to Ingild, brother of Ine, through 
whom he is linked with the kin of Cerdic, the 
royal stock of Wessex. Egbert is said to have 
been the son of Ealhmund, the son of Eafa or Eaba, 
the son of Eoppa, the son of Ingild. If Ingild, 
Eafa, and Eoppa are only a shade less mythical 
than the demigods and heroes from whom the 
house of Cerdic derived its descent, there is some 
evidence for the existence of Ealhmimd, Egbert's 
reputed father. 

An Ealhmund is mentioned in a late Canterbury 
copy of the Chronicle as having been king of 
Kent about 784. A charter, the possible source 
of this entry, was granted by Ealhmund, rex Can- 
cicB, to Reculver in 784, and it seems probable that 
he ruled Kent at this time as an under-kingdom 
of Mercia. Certain coins of an Egcherht rex, min- 
ted by Udd, and by Babba who also struck money 
for the Mercian kings Off a and Coenwulf (757-821) 
and for the Kentish usurper Eadberht Praen 
(796-798), suggest that Egbert, too, may have 
reigned for a short time as a vassal king of Kent. 
A series of fairly well-attested charters connected 
with Christchurch, Canterbury, further show Offa 



30 Alfred the Truthteller 

revoking Kentish land-grants made by rex Egc- 
berhtus, and the Chronicle tells how Offa and his 
son-in-law Beorhtric of Wessex drove Egbert for 
three years from England into "Frank-land." 
Slight as are these indications, they seem to imply 
that Egbert was in some way connected with the 
determined effort of the men of Kent to preserve 
their ancient independence. He may have repre- 
sented the old royal stock to which, apparently, 
Eadberht Praen, the apostate priest who led the 
final struggle against Mercia, claimed to belong. 
Whether he took part in that struggle, which 
broke out on Offa's death in 796 and lasted till 
798, is, however, uncertain. The date of his exile 
cannot be precisely fixed, though it must have 
begun after 789, the year of Beorhtric's marriage 
to Offa's daughter, and before the death of Offa 
in 796. In any case, it fell within the reign of 
Charles the Great, and there is no reason to reject 
the interesting tradition, emphasised by William 
of Malmesbury, of the influence of the Carolin- 
gian civilisation on Egbert's later career. 

Of that career little enough is known. The 
Chronicle briefly notes Egbert's accession to the 
throne of Wessex, but his kinship with the house 
of Cerdic can only be traced through Ine's brother, 
the shadowy Ingild. Even his hereditary pos- 
sessions in Hampshire, which are often taken as 
evidence of his West- Saxon descent, were on either 
side of the river Meon, in that Jutish district 
which in race and history was more in sympathy 



England before Alfred 31 

with Kent than with Wessex. Nothing further is 
known of him till 814, when he harried the West- 
Welsh, or Celts of Western Devon and Cornwall. 
Eleven years later, in 825, his victory over the men 
of Devon at Gafulford left him free to turn against 
Mercia, now weakened by the civil war which had 
followed the death of Coenwulf, Offa's successor. 

The battle of EUandun, where Egbert defeated 
the Mercian King Beomwulf, though its site is 
disputed, was famous enough to be celebrated in 
an English song which may still be traced in the 
rhythmic Latin prose of Henry of Huntingdon. 
Egbert at once sent his son Ethelwulf, Alfred's 
father, into Kent, with the bishop of Sherborne, 
the ealdorman of Hampshire, and a "great host." 
Baldred, the under-king, was driven over Thames, 
and Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex submitted 
to the West-Saxon King, "because," says the 
Chronicle, "they had been formerly wrongfully 
forced from his kin," a statement which, if applied 
to Kent, goes to strengthen the theory of Egbert's 
Kentish descent. Ethelwulf now became under- 
king of Kent, while the East-Anglians in turn 
revolted from Mercia, and after slaying their 
overlord Beornwulf in battle, sought Egbert as 
"peace giver and protector." 

Beomwulf's successor Ludeca fell in the follow- 
ing year, and in 829 Egbert deposed Wiglaf, the 
new Mercian ruler, and conquered the Mercian 
kingdom and "all that was south of Humber." 
It is here that the Winchester chronicler calls him 



32 Alfred the Truthteller 

"the eighth king who was Bretwalda." "The 
ninth," wrote Henry of Huntingdon in the twelfth 
century, expanding this passage, "was his grand- 
son Alfred, who brought all parts of the kingdom 
under his sway . ' ' The North Welsh also ' ' bowed ' ' 
to Egbert, and he actually, as his coins show, 
called himself "King of the Mercians," though he 
allowed Wiglaf to return as under-king. 

But too much must not be made of the unity 
achieved with such apparent ease. England was 
still merely a loose bundle of petty states, held 
together by one strong and successful warrior. 
Already, too, the cloud was gathering which was 
soon to burst over the country and sweep away 
all signs of a premature federation. The year 
832 — to be corrected to 835 — is marked in the 
earliest extant manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle by the ominous entry: "Here the 
heathen men harried Sheppey." In the following 
year a fierce naval battle against a fleet of thirty- 
five Danish ships took place at Charmouth, and 
the vikings were victorious. In 838, an alliance 
between the Cornish men and the Danes threat- 
ened Wessex with a new and terrible danger, from 
which Egbert's great victory at Hengestesdune 
(Hingston Down), near Plymouth, delivered his 
kingdom. A year later, in 839, he died, and Ethel- 
wulf , his eldest son, succeeded to the West-Saxon 
throne, while his younger son Athelstan became 
under-king of Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex. 

The death of Egbert, and the beginning of the 



England before Alfred 33 

struggle with the vikings which was destined so 
profoundly to affect English political and social 
history, are turning-points which inyite a backward 
glance at that older England into which Alfred 
was born, but which his children were only to 
know under changed conditions. 

Any attempt to reconstruct the English society 
of the ninth century must go back to earlier re- 
cords, to archasological remains, to the history 
of Bede, the annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 
the laws and charters, the letters and documents, 
the poems and lives of saints, which incidentally 
throw light on customs and traditions. Even so, 
the light is but dim and uncertain. It might be 
said of Alfred's age as an old biographer wrote of 
the life of Alfred himself: "The Pieces we have 
being mangled . . . they seem rather the Rubbish 
of a Broken Statue than the whole Parts of a 
Perfect Image." Yet, allowing for variations 
due to differences of race and locality, one thing 
at least is clear. Anglo-Saxon society was a 
country society, rooted in the soil, occupied chiefly 
with agriculture, living on and by the land. Per- 
haps this very fact may help us to get near to the 
true spirit of the past, for there is a quiet conser- 
vatism in Nature which" is reflected in the conti- 
nuity of economic custom. The rude forefathers 
of the hamlet live again in their remote descen- 
dants, whose toilsome days are still bound up with 
the unceasing course of summer and winter, seed- 
time and harvest. 



34 Alfred the Truthteller 

There is very little about cities and city-life 
in the eighth- and ninth-century records. The 
English towns were ecclesiastical or military 
centres, royal residences, markets for the produce 
of the countryside, but they were comparatively 
few and unimportant. There was nothing in 
England to rival the splendour of Rome, or Aachen, 
or even Paris. Laws and charters reveal a rustic 
people, observant of natural features, marking 
their boundaries by river and hill, by the "broad 
oak," or the "withy-mere" which had caught their 
eye and fancy, tending their pigs in the forest, 
where the sound of the axe felling timber rang 
through the clearings, or following the heavy plough 
drawn by its team of patient oxen, across the wide 
expanses of hedgeless fields, cut up into strips by 
"balks," or banks of turf, overgrown with wild 
flowers and grasses. 

The life of rural communities rises up before 
us as we read, of village and hamlet, of lonely 
homesteads, and monasteries set in solitary places, 
of the lord's hall and the peasant's hut; a sim- 
ple life, limited in its demands and outlook, but 
wholesome and vigorous, and all the more intense 
for its very narrowness. These hard-working 
farmers and shepherds were also great fighters, 
mighty hunters, valiant trenchermen, feasting 
without restraint when occasion offered, drinking 
deep of ale and mead, and repenting with equal 
thoroughness when fines had to be paid for brawl- 
ing in their cups, or when the fiery denunciations 




THE RING OF ALHSTAN 
In the Victoria and Albert Museum 



England before Alfred 35 

of the "mass-priest" woke their imagination with 
the terrors of the Day of Judgment. 

Something of the West-Saxon village life may 
be gathered from the regulations in Ine's laws 
which show the ceorl and the gebur^ at work and 
at play, ploughing and hedging, stealing, quarrel- 
ling and carousing, incurring penalties and receiv- 
ing compensation. Other figures also flit across 
the scene, the merchant, the "Welshman," the 
stranger, the fugitive, and the serf, while the land- 
grants mirror the face of the country and the 
manner of cultivation, the brooks and meres, 
fords and bridges, oaks and thorns, "gores" and 
"lynches."^ 

The Latin prose of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, 
the English alliterative verse of the "Widsith" 
song, or the Beowulf epic, paint for us the hall 
of king or eorl, the great "mead-hall," with its 
raftered roof and its glowing central hearth, where 
the chieftain sat in council with his wise men, or 
feasted with his thegns about him, or rested un- 
armed on winter nights, while the gleeman touched 
the harp and chanted the deeds of heroes. 

From early manuscripts, casual notices of dress 
or armour, and the mouldering relics in Anglo- 
Saxon graves, we can picture kings and warriors, 
bishops and monks, high-born ladies and rough' 

» The "churl" and "boor," or peasants. 

' "Gores" are " wedge-sha^ied strips of land on the side of an 
irregular field." "Lynches" are the banks between the plough- 
made terraces on a hillside. Both are common terms in con- 
nection with the "open-field" system of cultivation. 



36 Alfred the Truthteller 

peasants, in their habit as they Hved, in timic, 
super-tunic, and mantle, the men in breeches and 
stockings cross-gartered with bands of cloth or 
leather, with flowing hair and beard, the women 
veiled, in long tunics, often richly ornamented, 
the church dignitaries in vestments, the soldiers 
in mail shirts and roimd or peaked helmets, armed 
with shields, swords, spears, axes, and bows and 
arrows. 

Language and literature suggest a brave and 
loyal folk, tinged with the fatalistic melancholy 
that is bom of grey skies, and the relentless cold 
and darkness of northern winters, but responsive 
to the thrill of mystery and the charm of natural 
beauty. We see a world where men went in dread 
of demons and monsters, ghosts and witches, 
where their fancy played round the birdlike ship 
breasting the foam-flecked sea, the "whale's road," 
the "swan's road," and their eyes were quick to 
note the green of grassy headlands against brown 
furrows, the pale shining of water, or the fitful 
gleam of armour and weapons. We hear in their 
poetry, as they heard, the call of the cuckoo in 
spring woods, the croak of the raven, the bird of 
war, as it hovered over the battle-field, and the 
"dreadful evensong" of the wolf. 
" Yet the soul of the people remains unrevealed. 
Who shall tell us what these thegns and ladies 
who lie beneath their grassy barrows, with sword 
and shield, jewels and treasure, beside them, 
really thought and hoped when they walked in the 



England before Alfred 37 

sunshine? Was the ceorl, in the days when he was 
no cold constitutional abstraction, but a warm- 
blooded human being, a mere savage, or an un- 
lettered but not altogether uncivilised peasant, 
slow to understand, but tenacious of grip, and 
with some dim perception of the meaning of 
liberty and independence? There is no answer. 
This long-past age lies in an enchanted sleep, en- 
tangled in a maze of controversy, waiting for the 
magic touch that shall kindle it to life. Mean- 
while, it is at least possible to piece together from 
scattered fragments the external framework of 
the social organisation. 

Though the primitive democracy of the older 
school of constitutional historians must be rejected 
as based on insufficient evidence, it is probable 
that in the eighth and ninth centuries many of the 
village groups in England were independent lord- 
less communities, learning through local politics 
the wider lessons of freedom and equality in a 
well-balanced state. Many other villages, however, 
were already under the rule of lords, lay or eccle- 
siastical. In both types, free and dependent, 
the same system of cultivation would obtain. 
The peasant proprietor, the lord's "man," and the 
lord him.self all held strips of arable land in the 
open fields, with a proportionate share in meadow, 
wood, and waste. The arable was tilled, as a rule, 
by ploughs drawn by a yoke of four, six, or eight 
oxen, though a team of two oxen was not uncom- 
mon. The full eight-oxen team would be pro- 



38 Alfred the Truthteller 

vided by combination among the villagers, where 
no one landholder was sufficiently wealthy to bear 
the whole expense. A rotation of crops and fallow 
in successive years was observed in cultivation, 
most frequently either in simple alternation, com 
one year and fallow the next, or in a threefold 
course of "winter com," wheat or rye, "spring- 
corn," barley or oats, and fallow. 

There is evidence in the "land-books" or char- 
ters that this kind of common cultivation and 
joint holding with individual rights in the separate 
strips was older than the ninth century. Agri- 
cultural co-operation was, in fact, the natural 
result of economic and climatic conditions which 
made the tillage of the soil costly and laborious. 
A heavy soil meant a heavy plough with a normal 
team of eight oxen, and this was as much beyond 
the means of the average ninth-century peasant 
as a steam-plough is beyond those of his twentieth- 
century successor. The village generally formed 
a nucleus for the open fields, two, three, or four 
in number, which lay around it, while beyond 
stretched the meadow-land, the woods and copses, 
and the uncultivated wastes and commons. In 
hilly pastoral country, the village settlements seem 
to have been replaced by a more isolated way of 
life, in scattered homesteads and hamlets, but in 
the villages proper the houses clustered thickly 
together, so that the word "neighbour," the 
"near gebur^^ or "boor," acquired a new mean- 
ing of social obligation, and duty to a man's 



England before Alfred 39 

neighbour came to be ranked next to his duty 
to God. 

Before the middle of the eighth century, as the 
writings of Bede and the laws of the later Kentish 
kings and of Ine of Wessex show, English society 
was marked by definite class divisions. The 
wooden huts of the straggling village street, the 
homes of "churl" (ceorl) and "boor" (gebur), must 
often enough have been dominated by the more 
pretentious "hall" of the thegn or ealdorman, 
with its belfry and its wide gates. All over the 
country, too, an ecclesiastical aristocracy was 
springing up. More and more the parish church 
became the centre and meeting-place of the village, 
while endowments were lavished by kings and 
nobles on the great monastic houses, grants of 
land and jurisdiction, and of immunity from secular 
service, which gave the clergy a privileged posi- 
tion, and at the same time involved them in worldly 
affairs. Ecclesiastical provisions, regulations as 
to the conduct of priests and monks, the observ- 
ance of Sunday and the payment of tithes, fill a 
large space in the laws, the foundation of monas- 
teries and the appointment of bishops are as 
prominent in the annals as the victories and 
succession of kings, and stories of miracles and 
wonder-working relics play an important part 
in popular literature. The high ecclesiastics were 
influential, also, in the work of government, but 
here they shared their power with the lay nobles 
and officials. 



40 Alfred the Truthteller 

The actual administration of the Anglo-Saxon 
state is one of the most fiercely controverted sub- 
jects in this period of controversy. Every point, 
alike in central and in local government, has been 
made the occasion for disputes which need not be 
repeated here. There is too little direct evidence 
to warrant a positive conclusion, but the local 
village groups appear to have been linked, however 
slightly, to the central authority, by means of at 
least two intermediate administrative units, the 
hundred or its prototype, and the shire. The shires 
were under the rule of ealdormen, who, with the 
king's thegns and the higher clergy, regular and 
'secular, formed the inner circle of witan, or wise 
men, whose signatures were appended to charters, 
and who acted as a deliberative and advisory 
royal council, with powers that varied with the 
varying strength of the monarchy. 

Though the West-Saxons, in common with the 
other Germanic conquerors of England, recognised 
kingship as the normal form of government, in 
the eighth and ninth centuries their kings were, 
to some extent, held responsible to the people. 
Ine, Offa, and Egbert, if they were touched by the 
autocratic influence of Roman Imperialism, inter- 
preted Roman theory by Germanic traditional 
practice. The king was chosen from the sacred 
stock which claimed kindred with the tribal gods 
and heroes, but there was acknowledgment, even 
in this limited right of selection, of the official 
character of kingship, a character on which the 



England before Alfred 41 

Christian Church laid stress, while the solemn 
coronation oath implied a mutual compact be- 
tween king and people. 

The political theory of the eariy Germanic 
states was a strand woven of the three threads of 
tribal tradition, Roman Imperialism, and Christ- 
ianised Judaism. If the Mercian or West-Saxon 
king regarded himself as, like Saul, "the Lord's 
anointed," king "by the gift of God," if, like the 
Csesars, he issued coins and used sounding titles, 
there was still much of the half -barbarous chief- 
tain about him. In actual dignity and position 
he differed from his subjects rather in degree than 
in kind. He had royal demesnes, scattered over 
the country, and a right to take food-tribute on 
his progresses. A heavy fine was exacted for 
contempt of his authority, or for injury to his 
person, while he could grant to communities and 
individuals a special peace, protected by severe 
penalties. Yet, despotic though he might be in 
practice, in theory his power was limited, not 
only by the advice of his council, but by the almost 
sacred nature of the customary law, the inherited 
wisdom of the race, beyond and above any indi- 
vidual man, a thing to be reverenced and guarded, 
and not lightly tampered with. 

It was these laws, "dooms," or customs which 
were "declared" and "interpreted" in the courts 
of justice, central and local, by king or ealdorman, 
by thegn or reeve, or, if needful, by the freemen 
who constituted the court. They formed an 



42 Alfred the Truthteller 

archaic body of law, in which a man's legal status 
was determined by a wergild, the price paid for 
his life to his kindred, where the kindred were the 
avengers of blood, and the individual was but a 
unit in a family group. In this system men were 
classed as twelfhynde, those with a wergild of 
twelve hundred shillings, sixhynde, with a six 
hundred shilling wergild, and twyhynde, with a 
wergild of two hundred shillings. The twelfhynde 
and twyhynde classification seems to have been 
used much as we use "gentle and simple," to cover 
the whole free population ; it corresponded roughly 
to the old division into "eorl and ceorl,"" noble- 
man and commoner. 

There was nobility of blood; a man could be 
bom into the ranks of the eorls, and apparently 
also into the class of gesiths or thegns. There was 
an official nobility, too, dependent on service. 
The king's favour could raise a man to the rank 
of ealdorman, with all that it implied of high 
wergild and dignified position, and the "king's 
thegns" seem to have owed special services to 
their royal lord. Or, again, men could "thrive," 
or rise in the social scale by merit or good fortune. 
A ceorl could become a king's thegn, or even an 
eorl; amongst freemen there were no hard and fast 
class barriers; all were "lawful men," with wergild 
and kindred, legal rights and obligations duly 
proportioned to their respective grades in the 
social hierarchy, distinguished alike by privilege 
and responsibility from the servile class of theows 



England before Alfred 43 

or slaves, who were personally unfree, and required 
a definite act of manumission to raise them to the 
ranks of freemen. 

The chief public obligations which the freemen 
of the early English state were called on to meet 
were, doubtless, the payment of tribute, the en- 
forcement of justice, and the defence of the king- 
dom. The food-rents and services by which a 
tribal king or chief was in great measure main- 
tained, go back to very early times. The primi- 
tive king travelled from one royal tun or " vill" to 
another, "eating up his rents" as he went, feasting 
in barbaric state in his simple hall, hunting in his 
forests, dispensing a rude justice to the neighbour- 
hood, and then passing on, with wife and children, 
courtiers and servants, goods and chattels, to his 
next halting-place. 

Justice was further administered by those local 
courts of which only dim and fleeting glimpses 
can be obtained. These seem to have been pre- 
sided over by royal officials, bishop and ealdorman, 
sheriff and "reeve," and to have been regularly 
attended by the freemen who owed the service of 
' ' suit of court. ' ' Where the law to be administered 
represented the customs of the tribe no professional 
judges were needed. The official president of the 
court, supported by the "suitors," was competent 
to state the customary penalty. The trial was con- 
ducted by the ancient method of ordeal, by fire 
or water, or by compurgation, or "oath-helping," 
when the accused swore that he was innocent, and 



44 Alfred the Truthteller 

his "helpers'* swore that his oath was "clean," 
or true. The oath-helpers varied in number with 
their dignity and the consequent value of their 
oaths, and with the gravity of the offence and the 
rank of the offender, but there was little or no 
idea of weighing evidence in the modern sense 
of the term. Decision of guilt was too hard a task 
for man, unless the criminal had been taken red- 
handed. In all other cases God must give the 
verdict through a ceremonial appeal. 

If cattle-lifting, theft, and crimes of violence 
kept the courts of justice busy, the constant civil 
dissensions and tribal wars of growing states made 
the duty of military defence both imperative and 
burdensome. Fyrdung, service in the fyrd or 
national army, early became one of the most 
important and ordinary of the obligations laid 
upon freemen. It constituted, with the upkeep 
of fortifications and the repair of bridges {burh-bot 
and brycg-bot) , the trinoda necessitas, or triple duty, 
which was a common incident of eighth- and ninth- 
century land-tenure. 

Ine's laws prescribed a definite scale of fines for 
neglect of the fyrd. The "landowning sithcund- 
man'^ or "born gentleman, " who was also a landed 
proprietor, paid a hundred and twenty shillings 
and forfeited his land, the landless sithcundman 
paid sixty shillings, the "churlish man," thirty 
shillings. Fyrdung, then, was incumbent on all 
ranks of freemen, but the composition of the body 
thus formed and the exact nature of the services 



England before Alfred 45 

rendered are problems which have never yet been 
satisfactorily solved. It has generally been as- 
sumed that the Jyrd was originally the nation in 
arms, serving tinder local officers, ealdormen or 
sheriffs, on the basis of one man for every hide, or 
family holding of a hundred and twenty acres: — 
an ill-trained, ill-armed force of foot-soldiers, 
with a nucleus of better equipped mounted in- 
fantry, gesiths or thegns, king's followers and 
men of substance, who acted as a kind of royal 
bodyguard. 

It has been thought, also, though the evidence 
is insufficient for proof, that by the eleventh cent- 
ury the fyrd had become a specialised force of 
mounted infantry, in which each soldier repre- 
sented a land-unit of five hides, or six hundred 
acres, though in emergencies practically the whole 
free able-bodied population could be called into 
the field for defence against invasion. Another 
theory, however, would introduce the principle of 
speciaHsation much earlier, and make the fyrd of 
Alfred's day no citizen army, but a comparatively 
small body of mounted infantry, fighting on foot, 
but riding to the field of battle, in which the rank 
and file followed private lords rather than public 
officers, and the ceorls acted mainly as a sort of 
Army Service Corps, carrying provisions to the 
host, or perhaps, on occasion, working as sappers 
and miners, when roads or earthworks had to be 
made. Here, again, the evidence hardly admits 
of a certain conclusion, though, such as it is, it 



46 Alfred the Truthteller 

points to the retention of the current theory, with 
some modification. ^ 

Of the ninth century fyrd it may, perhaps, 
safely be asserted, that it did not invariably con- 
tain precisely the same elements, but that it was 
generally a large force, as compared with a werod, 
or troop of armed men, and that it was always a 
local force, or a combination of local forces. It 
seems probable that the fyrd which Egbert led 
to the north in 829, to receive the submission of 
Northumbria, was a more mobile and a less 
popular body than the army that he called out 
in 838 when news arrived of the landing of the 

' The chief Anglo-Saxon terms for an army are fyrd, here, 
werod, and fetha, while Moth is used for a smaller armed band. 
Of these words, fyrd connects with faran, to go, or "fare," and 
implies motion, activity, not necessarily of a military character; 
here is related to hergian, to harry, werod to wer, a man, and 
fetha to fet, feet. In the early Anglo-Saxon poems fyrd and here 
seem to be used interchangeably, and, moreover, the fyrd ap- 
pears as the folc, or people in its military aspect. In later years 
the terminology tends to become more rigid, but fyrd and werod 
retain a wide and somewhat indeterminate significance, while to 
here and Moth a suggestion of violence and aggression is gradually 
attached, which culminates in the close connection of here with 
the army of the vikings. Thus a passage in Ine's laws, 13, i, 
classes together the gang of thieves, the hloth, and the here, and 
defines the here as a body of more than thirty-five men, the hloth 
as a band of from seven to thirty-five men, and the gang of thieves 
as any number below seven. In Ine's time fines were both 
inflicted for joining the hloth and for failing to join the fyrd, 
and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle applies hloth, as well as here, 
to the vikings. (Alfred, 29-31; Ine, 51. Cf. Ine, 14, 15; A. S. 
Chron., 894.) Alfred took hlothbote from the Moth which slew an 
innocent free man. 



England before Alfred 47 

great shiphere of the Danes, and of their alliance 
with the Welsh. 

When he that heard and fared with the fyrd, 

(Tha he thcet hierde and mid fierde ferde) as the 
Winchester chronicler wrote, the rude rhyme show- 
ing, perhaps, a touch of national pride in the West- 
Saxon soldiers who won the battle of Hengestesdune. 
At EUandun, again, the battle against the Mer- 
cians was fought by the fyrd, but Egbert could 
detach a micel werod from the main body and send 
it under special commanders to subdue Kent. 

Later on, in the Danish wars, the Chronicles 
mention the fyrd of the West-Saxons, the fyrd of 
the king of the Mercians, and the great fyrd that 
the Northumbrians gathered together to oppose the 
invaders. There is mention, too, of fights be- 
tween the Danes and the men of Somerset or 
Dorset, of Kent or Surrey, under their ealdormen, 
and sometimes the local force is identified with 
the shire itself, as when in 860 "Osric ealdorman" 
with " Hamtunshire " and "^thelwulf ealdorman" 
with "Berkshire" combined against the vikings 
who had attacked Winchester. As in former 
days "folk" and fyrd were interchangeable, so 
now fyrd and "shire" could be used indifferently. 

There is nothing in all this, however, to show 
whether these local troops were normally mounted 
infantry or simple foot-soldiers. They are gene- 
rally said to "fare," or to be "led" by the king, 
though ealdormen, king's thegns, and reeves are 



48 Alfred the Truthteller 

occasionally spoken of as "riding" on an expedi- 
tion. The whole question will recur in connection 
with the wars of Alfred's reign, when notices of 
"riding" are found more frequently in the Chron- 
icles. Of the earlier Anglo-Saxon jyrd, before the 
coming of the Danes, it can only be affirmed with 
any approach to certainty that it was a body of 
"territorials," connected with land, while the 
werod was based rather on a personal principle, 
and that all free laymen, from eorl to ceorl, owed 
some kind of fyrd service, either directly or by 
representatives. 

The invasions of the Danes, which forced the 
English kingdoms to organise themselves per- 
manently for defence, are accepted by all the 
western mediaeval chroniclers as a scourge of God, 
by far the most terrible of the "five plagues" of 
Britain: Romans, Picts and Scots, Angles and 
Saxons, Danes, and Normans. The viking ships 
first appeared off the English coast at the close 
of the eighth century, though where these invaders 
came from, and to what race they belonged, are 
much disputed questions. The Franks called 
them all Northmen, the English knew them all as 
Danes, the Irish distinguished between the Dubh 
Gain, or dark strangers, and the Finn Gaill, or fair 
strangers. To every nation of the West they were 
heathen pirates, shapes of dread and horror. The 
old chroniclers were right in drawing an analogy 
between their incursions and those of the Angles 
and Saxons, three hundred and fifty years earlier. 



England before Alfred 49 

Like them they were at first mere raiders, bands 
of adventurers under warlike leaders, devastating 
the land like a pack of wolves, or a swarm of 
locusts, and then passing on. Like them, as time 
elapsed, their enterprise grew in scope and im- 
portance, until the buccaneers had been trans- 
formed into colonists, who settled and tilled 
the lands which they had first wasted, and then 
conquered. 

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells how, in the 
days of King Beorhtric of Wessex, that is, between 
786 and 802, "three ships" of Danish men came 
to the English coast, and how the "reeve" (gerefa) 
rode down to see who the strangers were, and 
met his death at their hands. Ethelwerd, writing 
in the tenth century, makes the "reeve" into a 
king's reeve, an exactor regis, called Beaduheard, 
gives the place of landing as Dorchester, and 
says that the reeve took the pirates at first for 
merchants. 

The very form of this story shows how early the 
coming of the vikings passed into legend and song, 
and how deep an impression their ravages had 
made on the popular mind. Even so Hengest and 
Horsa are said to have come to Britain with "three 
keels," or ^Ue of Sussex and his sons with "three 
ships, " or Cerdic and Cynric of Wessex with "five 
ships," according to one annal, "three ships" 
according to another. Even so, too, but with a 
happier issue, in the Beowulf epic, did the thegn 
who watched the coast for Hrothgar, King of the 



50 Alfred the Truthteller 

Danes, ride down to the shore to challenge Beowulf 

and his comrades, when they landed from their 
"lofty keel." The West-Saxon reeve Beaduheard 
was, as Henry of Huntingdon, in repeating the 
tale, sadly notes, with pardonable exaggeration, 
only the first of "many millions" of Englishmen 
to be slain by the Danes. 

In 793 the earliest authentic record of a viking 
raid on England occurs in connection with the 
famous sack of the church and monastery of Lin- 
disfarne, which moved Alcuin to write letters of 
sympathy and exhortation to his countrymen from 
his retreat at the Carolingian court. Dreadful 
portents, tempests, and lightning, and "fiery 
dragons flying in the air," heralded, it is said, "the 
devastation of God's church at Lindisfarne by 
the harrying of heathen men." 

The next year the pirates came again, to attack 
Jarrow, but they were scattered by a storm, sent, 
so the monks believed, by St. Cuthbert, for the 
discomfiture of his enemies. In the twelfth cent- 
ury Simeon of Durham could sketch, with vivid 
touches, the still unforgotten scene of terror: — the 
wolf -like invaders and their helpless victims, the 
plundering of churches, and the slaughter of 
priests, monks, and nuns. 

The opening of the ninth century saw the diver- 
sion of the viking activity to the coasts of Ireland 
and western Scotland, of Frisia, and of France. 
For nearly forty years England had peace, while 
Ireland was ravaged from Donegal to Kerry, and 



England before Alfred 51 

St. Columba's rich island sanctuary of lona was 
despoiled three times. It was not till the last 
years of King Egbert's life that Kent and Wessex 
were seriously troubled by raids of "heathen men." 
The Isle of Sheppey was harried in 834, and a 
descent was made on Charmouth in Dorsetshire 
in 836. These expeditions, which began in the 
year after the battle of the "Field of Lies," seem 
to be connected with the revival of viking incur- 
sions on the Frisian and Flemish coasts, and were 
probably carried out by detachments from the 
great Danish host which at this time took advan- 
tage of the civil war between Louis the Pious and 
his- sons to sack the wealthy trading towns of 
the Rhine and Scheldt, Dorstadt, Utrecht, and 
Antwerp. 

More formidable, and somewhat different in 
character, was the invasion of south-western 
England in 838 by the allied forces of the 
Danes and the Cornishmen. It has even been 
suggested, though the evidence is very slight, 
that this attack came from Ireland, where the 
vikings, probably in this case Norwegians, under 
their able leader Turgesius, Thorgest, or Thorgils, 
were beginning to settle in the land they had 
won. The casual raids were now developing into 
organised campaigns, planned with knowledge 
and purpose. England's forty years of peace 
were to be followed by forty years of constant 
anxiety, and of fierce struggle with no despicable 
foe. 



52 Alfred the Truthteller 

That the Northmen were trained soldiers and 
skilled in seamanship is evident both from the 
testimony of the contemporary chronicles and 
from the remains of viking ships, armour, and 
weapons which have been unearthed in Norway 
and Denmark, and, to a much smaller extent, in 
France and England. The most perfect specimen 
of a viking ship was discovered at Gokstad in 
southern Norway, and has been attributed to the 
eighth or early ninth century. It is long, narrow, 
and shallow, some seventy-nine and a half feet from 
stern to bows, sixty-six feet in the keel, about 
five feet deep, and more than sixteen feet broad 
in its widest part, built of oak planks, nailed, and 
bolted together with iron, and caulked with plaited 
cowhair. It was undecked, though there may 
have been lockers at stem and bows, and the 
bottom was covered with loose boards, with stor- 
age room beneath them. Rowed by sixteen oars 
a side, with shuttered rowlocks cut through the 
oak planking, it had also a mast forty feet high, 
a yard, and a square sail. It was steered by means 
of a short broad oar on the starboard side, worked 
by a movable tiller. Remains were found of a 
tent-like deck awning, white, with red stripes, 
which must have been secured by ropes to the 
sides of the vessel, of an iron anchor, a cauldron 
for cooking, plates, cups, and other iron utensils, 
and a wooden draught board, with lines scored on 
the back for the old game of "nine men's morris." 
Three smaller boats, twenty-two and a quarter 




s > 






England before Alfred 53 

feet and about fourteen feet long in the keel, lay 
with the Gokstad ship. ^ 

Such must have been the "long ships" which 
struck terror into English hearts when their square 
sails, white or striped, were descried far out at sea, 
bearing down on the coast with a favouring north- 
east wind behind them or creeping up the wide 
estuary of the Thames, between low marshy banks, 
to carry desolation to the very heart of the fertile 
and tranquil country. Their descendants, long 
and narrow and of light draught, with pointed 
stem and bows, still ply on the lakes and rivers of 
Norway, Denmark, and Finland, and still put out 
to sea with square sails set to catch the breeze. 

An average-sized viking ship of the ninth cent- 
ury would probably carry from forty to fifty men, 
with weapons and food, but a large vessel might 
well hold from eighty to a hundred warriors, and 
though many expeditions were undertaken by 
very small squadrons, or even by three or four 
"keels" (ceolas), a great fleet might number hund- 
reds of ships. The command was often divided, 
and the large fleets, in spite of their admirable 
organisation, appear to have been rather aggrega- 
tions of groups than united wholes. 

Under such chosen sea-kings as Turgesius, who 
led the "great royal fleet" to Ireland, or Rorik, 

' These details are partly taken from the description by Prof. 
York Powell in Scandinavian Britain (Colling wood and York 
Powell, S.P.C.K.). The ship has also been assigned to the nth 
century. 



54 Alfred the Truthteller 

the kinsman of King Harold of Denmark, whom a 
chronicler calls "the gall of Christendom" {fel 
Christianitatis) , these "noble sea-levies" must 
have looked stately enough in their full battle- 
array, the round shields hung in a close row above 
the oars, with metal bosses glittering in the sun- 
light, the "golden war-banner" shining in the 
bows, the huge carved prows shaped like the heads 
of dragons or monsters. "Ships came from the 
west," runs a Northern lay, "ready for war, with 
grinning heads and carven beaks." 

The vikings, too, who sailed in these fleets 
were splendid men, whose appearance won unwill- 
ing admiration from the Western chroniclers: — 
"men of great stature and fair of face, and most 
expert in arms." Disciplined and well-equipped 
warriors, they were as much at home on land as 
at sea, and could beach their boats, commandeer 
horses, and ride on a foray, with the same reckless 
courage with which they faced the gales of the 
North Sea, or ventured across the Atlantic Ocean, 
in their small open ships. 

Egbert's victory at Hengestesdune in 838 gave 
Wessex a brief respite from viking invasion, but 
with his death in 839 and the accession of his son 
Ethelwulf, the raids began again, and grew more 
and more serious and determined as time went on. 
A comparison has often been drawn between 
Ethelwulf and his contemporary, Louis the Pious. 
The likeness is, indeed, too striking to be over- 
looked : — the strong father, working for peace and 



England before Alfred 55 

unity; the weaker son, clinging to his inheritance 
in the face of internal discontent and external 
danger ; the rebellious children at home, the hostile 
Northmen abroad. Yet the whole action of the 
island drama is on a smaller scale. There is less 
of pity and terror in the catastrophe; the Danes 
were resisted more successfully; the brothers, 
Ethelbert, Ethelred, and Alfred, united against 
the common foe instead of weakening their 
forces by civil war; above all, where the West 
Franks had to make the best of a Charles 
the Bald, the West-Saxons found an Alfred the 
Great. 

It is partly, perhaps, due to the fame of Alfred 
that legend has busied itself with his father's 
history until the true Ethelwulf is lost in a cloud 
of mythical ancestors, saintly advisers, and eccle- 
siastical eulogists. The habit of regarding him as 
an English Louis the Pious is further responsible 
for many of the current theories of his weakness 
and incapacity. The king who went in person 
to Rome with gifts in his hand and devoted the 
tenth part of his land to God's service. Was himself 
turned into a churchman by admiring biographers. 
William of Malmesbury says that though he was 
ordained sub-deacon, he was permitted by the 
Pope to resume the secular life on the death of 
Egbert without other heirs. Henry of Hunting- 
don makes him bishop of Winchester. St. Swithun 
becomes his tutor, and St. Neot his kinsman, and 
his descent is traced through Germanic heroes and 



56 Alfred the Truthteller 

gods to Jewish patriarchs and the Christian Deity, 
the Father of all. 

Apart from these legendary accretions, a good 
deal is known about Ethel wulf's life. His name 
figures in Continental annals and in English records. 
He had close and interesting relations with the 
West Franks and the Papacy, and he seems to 
have been a man of cultivated taste and sincere 
piety, whose lack of capacity has been somewhat 
hastily inferred from the absence of evidence for 
his direct military activity in the Danish wars, 
and from the vicarious energy of his ealdormen 
and bishops in the defence and government of 
the country. After the battle of EUandun he 
was sent with Wulf heard, ealdorman of Hamp- 
shire, and Ealhstan, Bishop of Sherborne, to 
receive the submission of Kent. He then became 
under-king of Kent and its dependencies, Essex, 
Surrey, and Sussex, and he grants or signs charters 
connected with Kentish affairs as "king," "king 
of the Kentishmen," "king of Kent" {rex, rex 
Cantuariorum, rex Cancice), from 828 to 838. In 
839 Egbert's death gave him the West-Saxon 
throne, and he appears to have been succeeded 
in the Kentish under-kingdom by Athelstan, who 
is variously described as his eldest son and his 
younger brother. The question is obscure, but 
it is probable that Athelstan, who signs charters 
as "king" and "king of Kent," from 842 to 850, 
was the son of Egbert, and that he governed East 
Anglia as under-king before his translation to Kent. 



England before Alfred 57 

The year after Ethelwulf 's accession, that fateful 
year 840 which saw the death of Louis the Pious, 
saw also the renewal of viking attacks upon Eng- 
land. One of the last acts of the ealdorman Wulf- 
heard before he "fared forth" was the repulse of 
thirty- three shiploads of pirates at Southampton, 
a victory speedily followed by the defeat of the 
men of Dorset at Portland, and the death of their 
ealdorman ^thelhelm. In the following year 
Herebryht, the Mercian ealdorman, was slain by 
"heathen men," and there was harrying on the 
eastern coast, in Lindsey, in East Anglia, and in 
Kent. 

The civil war in the Empire had given the North- 
men an opportunity, and in 841 a great fleet under 
the viking Oscar appeared in the Seine, plundered 
Rouen, and threatened the Abbey of Jumieges. 
It seems to have been the same fleet which, in 842, 
attacked both the flourishing port of Cwantawic 
(St. Josse-sur-mer, or Etaples), and the English 
towns of London and Rochester. In 843, also, 
unless the chroniclers have confused the events 
of this year with those of 836, Ethelwulf, like his 
father, seven years earlier, was defeated by " thirty- 
five shiploads" of Danes at Charmouth, while 
in 844 the vikings slew Redwulf, king of North- 
umbria. 

The main body of the Northmen had now entered* 
into alliance with the rebellious Bretons. They 
sacked Nantes, and in 843 wintered for the first 
time on the island of Noirmoutiers, at the mouth 



58 Alfred the Truthteller 

of the Loire. The next year they joined the dis- 
contented party in Aquitaine, devastated south- 
ern France, and then advanced on the Christian 
kingdom of the Asturias, and even sailed down the 
coast of Portugal and Spain to Cadiz, and pene- 
trated as far inland as Seville. Driven back by 
the disciplined troops of the Spanish Moors, they 
turned northwards once more, and in the March of 
845, a viking fleet of a hundred and twenty ships 
plundered Paris, and only retired on the payment 
of a heavy tribute by Charles the Bald. Ragnar, 
the leader of this expedition, has often been iden- 
tified with the Ragnar Lodbrok of legendary fame, 
whose story is closely interwoven with English 
traditions, and the retreat from Paris was early 
attributed to miraculous causes, a magic fog pre- 
venting the advance of the ships, the intervention 
of St. Germanus, or the divine judgment, visiting 
the sacrilegious invaders with pestilence and death. 
It was in this same year, 845, that Hamburg, 
the new archbishopric of the north, was ravaged 
by King Horik's Danish fleet of six hundred sail. 
In 846 a Flemish monastic chronicler declared that 
the Danish pirates had subdued almost the whole 
province of Frisia. Hard winters, bitter winds, 
and torrential rain aggravated the misery of the 
people by destroying the growing crops and vines. 
The land was desolated by war and famine. In 
Aquitaine packs of wolves three hundred strong 
roamed unchecked through the country, devour- 
ing the men and women whom those human wolves, 



England before Alfred 59 

the vikings, had spared. The Northmen besieged 
Bordeaux in 847 and seized Dorstadt, which they 
had burnt in the previous year. 

On every hand fire and sword, bloodshed and 
rapine, struck terror to men's hearts and paralysed 
their energies. Ireland, like Frisia and France, 
lay helpless at the feet of the heathen conquerors. 
Only in England some power of resistance seemed 
left, when the men of Somerset and Dorset under 
their ealdormen, with Ealhstan, the warlike Bishop 
of Sherborne, defeated a Danish host at the mouth 
of the river Parret, on the Somersetshire coast. 

But in England, too, the future looked dark 
enough when, not long after the Somersetshire 
victory, Alfred, the youngest child of King Ethel- 
wulf, was born. The long ships of the vikings 
still hovered like birds of ill omen just across the 
Channel, waiting to swoop down on their destined 
prey. Though as yet their attacks had been 
casual and intermittent, the work of detached 
bodies of Danes or Norsemen, under leaders whose 
names have passed from memory, all through Al- 
fred's childhood they were growing more regular 
and formidable, until, with his dawning manhood, 
the full "fury of the Northmen" fell at last upon 
England. Henceforth the "Great Army" of the 
vikings, the Micel Here or Here of the Winchester 
Chronicle, became the central fact in the life of 
every Englishman, the constant preoccupation 
of the statesman and the soldier, the main theme of 
the chronicler and the moralist, a nightmare terror 



6o Alfred the Truthteller 

to trembling women and children, the dreadful 
yet half-welcome rod of God's wrath to monks 
and nuns eager for martyrdom. 

Nearly three hundred years later, the chronicler 
Henry of Huntingdon felt something of that old 
horror and despair, when he wrote of the viking 
invasions, the "fourth plague" of Britain: 

There was no profit to the victors when they con- 
quered, for a fresh fleet and a greater army ever 
appeared. . . , God Almighty sent forth these fierce 
and cruel people, like swarms of bees: — Danes and 
Goths, Norwegians and Swedes, Vandals and Frisians: 
— who spared neither age nor sex. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD OF ALFRED 
848-866 

WHERE the northern slope of the Berkshire 
Downs falls gently to the basin of the 
Thames, on the edge of the Vale of White Horse, 
amidst cornfields and green water-meadows, lies 
the little town of Wantage. Here, as a modern 
statue in the wide old market square records, 
"Alfred the Great, the West-Saxon King," was 
bom, "a.d. 849." The only contemporary evi- 
dence for this accepted tradition is the opening of 
Asser's Life of Alfred, which has been copied by 
later chroniclers : 

In the year of our Lord's Incarnation 849, Alfred, 
King of the Anglo-Saxons, was born in the royal " viJl " 
[villa regia] called Wanating, in the district named 
Berrocscire [Berkshire], which district is so called from 
the Berroc wood, where the box-tree grows most 
abundantly. 

Isolated as is this mention of Alfred's birthplace, 
there is no reason to doubt its truth. Its very 
unexpectedness, indeed, makes for its credibility. 

61 



62 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

Wantage, though a royal " vill, " was too small and 
inconspicuous to have been deliberately chosen 
by an unscrupulous biographer for the scene of 
his hero's entrance into the world. On the other 
hand, it was quite a possible place for the birth of 
a son of the house of Egbert, which held large 
estates in the neighbourhood, originating, possibly, 
in the grant of land "about Ashdown" made in 
the middle of the seventh century by Cenwalh, 
King of the West-Saxons, to his kinsman Cuthred, 
grandson of Cynegils, a former King.^ The ham 
at Waneting was bequeathed by Alfred to his wife, 
and remained crown-land till the twelfth century. 
Asser may even have derived his information from 
the King himself. The local touches, the ety- 
mology of "Berkshire," the box- trees in the Ber- 
roc wood, suggest a special personal knowledge, for 
it was unusual in the ninth century to preserve 
details of birth, save in those ecclesiastical bi- 
ographies where signs and portents heralded the 
advent of a future saint or martyr. 

Death, the achieved fame, the completed earthly 
career, the "faring forth" into the unseen, alone 
seemed worthy to be remembered. The kings and 
nobles whose ohits were carefully registered, that 
prayers might be offered for their souls, whose 
virtues were commemorated by annalist and bard, 
had, as a rule, crept almost unheeded into life. 
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with its frequent en- 

' On the question of the transference of Berkshire from Mercia 
to Wessex cf. infra, p. 79, note i. 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 63 

tries of death and burial, succession and descent, 
passes over in silence the births of famous men. 
Wantage, then, may still boast of being "the 
cradle of the most illustrious King Alfred," and 
Berkshire may retain the name of Alfred the Great 
on her roll of worthies. 

The actual year of Alfred's birth is more open 
to dispute, though there can be little question that 
it was either 848 or 849, and the evidence is rather 
in favour of the earlier date. There are two 
contemporary authorities: Asser's Life of Alfred, 
and the West-Saxon royal genealogy and regnal 
table which is prefixed to the Parker or Win- 
chester manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 
Unfortunately, they do not agree. The regnal 
table is carried down to Alfred's accession, when 
"there were gone of his age three and twenty 
winters," when, that is, he was twenty-three years 
old. As he came to the throne in 871, "after 
Easter," this would throw back his birth to 848. 
Asser, on the contrary, says that Alfred was bom 
in 849, and became King "in the twenty- third 
year from his birth." 

Neither Asser nor the regnal table can claim to 
be infallible in matters of chronology, but of the 
two, the regnal table is somewhat the more trust- 
worthy, since it is very ancient, and is intimately 
connected with King Alfred. It occurs both at 
the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and 
at the end of the English version of Bede, as well 
as in a still earlier fragmentary form, and in each 



64 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

case it breaks off at Alfred's accession. It seems 
likely, therefore, that it was put together from 
older materials and brought up to date under the 
king's supervision before the completion of the 
Alfredian Chronicle in 891. ^ Asser, who probably 
wrote his book a little later, about 893, borrows 
his chronology from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 
reckoning from the Incarnation, but he also dates 
each year by the birth of Alfred, Since the 
Chronicle has no entries between 845 and 851, 
he may possibly have taken the date of Alfred's 
birth from the regnal table. ^ If so, he apparently 
understood the phrase "there were gone of his 
age three and twenty winters" to mean, not "aged 
twenty-three," but "in the twenty- third year of 
his age." 

The point, after all, is not of vital importance. 
It is likely enough that Alfred himself would not 
have been able to give the day of his birth, though 
he would have known that he was but a youth of 
some twenty-three winters when he took upon his 
shoulders the full burden of government. The 
fashion of "keeping birthdays" does not, indeed, 

' If the date given in this table for the coming of Cerdic and 
Cynric a.d. 495 (the year 494 being "gone" or ended), be added 
to the 396 years which are said to have elapsed since Alfred's kin 
first won Wessex, the resulting date will be 891, the year of the 
last entry in the first hand of the Parker manuscript of the 
Chronicle. — Anscombe, " The Anglo-Saxon Computation of His- 
toric Time in the Ninth Cent.," British Numismatic Journal, 
Series!., vol. iv., 1907, p. 278. 

» Stevenson, Asser, p. 152, note on c. i, i. 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 65 

appear to have been observed in ninth-century 
England, partly, perhaps, on account of the supe- 
rior claims to reverence of the day of the patron 
saint after whom a child was named, but chiefly 
because, as was still the custom in Iceland in the 
nineteenth century, the midwinter Nativity of 
Christ, the Christmas Day with which the year 
may have begun, was celebrated as the one great 
birthday festival. 

If the Anglo-Saxon records are vague and un- 
satisfactory in their chronology, they preserve 
the genealogies of royal houses with reverent care. 
It mattered little when or where a ruler was born, 
but it mattered very much who his father was, 
and if he came of the true royal stock, the "right 
kingly kin" {cynecynri). The kings of Wessex 
were specially concerned to prove that their kin 
went back to Cerdic, the first of the royal line, 
and through him to the traditional forefathers of 
the race of Gewissce, or West-Saxons, "Gewis," 
Wig, and Freawine, and behind them again to the 
mythical Woden and his son Beldaeg. 

It is significant that no genealogy of Egbert, 
Alfred's grandfather, is found until the death of 
his son Ethelwulf, when the family had firmly 
established its somewhat doubtful claim to the 
West-Saxon throne. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
inserts, under the year 855, a notice of Ethelwulf 's 
death, which took place two or three years later, 
with a long and distinguished pedigree of his 
house, which has been thought to mark the close 



66 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

of an early collection of English annals. This 
pedigree gives the descent of Ethelwulf son of 
Egbert from Ingild, brother of Ine of Wessex, and 
links it on to the older West-Saxon genealogies 
in the Chronicle, which trace Ine's ancestry to 
Cerdic, and from Cerdic to Woden. Then, 
borrowing apparently from the genealogy of the 
Bernician dynasty, it adds Woden's descent from 
the fabulous demigod "Geat," and finally, draw- 
ing here from no loiown source, mounts up through 
some nine generations of dim, mysterious beings, 
whose names, varying in the different manuscripts 
of the Chronicle, recall old heroic poems, and 
legends of heathen kings, to connect them at last 
by the device of a son born to Noah "in the ark" 
with the patriarchs of the Old Testament, and so 
with Adam the first man, and with Christ, the 
spiritual second Adam. 

In the West-Saxon regnal table, too, the notice 
of Ethelwulf's reign is followed by a genealogy, 
showing his descent from Cerdic, and including 
not only Ine's brother Ingild, but his two sisters, 
Cwenburh, and Cuthburh the foundress and first 
abbess of Wimborne Minster, where one of Ethel- 
wulf's sons was afterwards buried. 

The pedigree of Ethelwulf, the first to introduce 
a Christian element into the pagan genealogy of 
the royal house of Wessex, is also the last of its 
kind in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Yet the West- 
Saxon kings continued to pride themselves on 
their divine ancestry, and Asser is careful to trace 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 67 

Alfred's descent from Cerdic through both his 
parents. He incorporates Ethelwulf's full pedi- 
gree in his text, and supplements it by the gen- 
ealogy of Alfred's mother Osburh, the daughter of 
Oslac, the royal butler or cupbearer, a Jute of the 
stock of Stuf and Wihtgar, kinsmen of Cerdic and 
Cynric, from whom they are said to have received 
a grant of the Isle of Wight. Stuf and Wihtgar 
are legendary figures, whose story comes from the 
suspicious fifth-century annals of the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle, but the tradition of Osburh's 
origin may well be genuine, and if Ethelwulf also 
numbered Jutes among his father's Kentish an- 
cestors, there must have been a strong Jutish strain 
in Alfred's blood. 

Of Oslac, the father of Osburh, nothing is 
known beyond Asser's statement, nor is it easy 
to say in what the duties of the king's butler 
(pincerna) consisted at this early period, though 
Oslac was, doubtless, a great nobleman, and a 
high official in the primitive court and household 
of his royal son-in-law. Osburh herself was, in 
Asser's words, "a most pious woman, noble in 
mind and noble in race," a worthy mother of kings. 
Her four sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, 
and Alfred, ruled over Wessex in succession. Her 
only daughter, Ethelswith, became the wife of 
the king of Mercia. 

Ethelbald signs charters with his father Ethel- 
wulf, as filius regis or dux films regis, from 847 to 
850, and in 851 he was present at the battle of 



68 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

Ockley (Aclea), when the Danes were defeated by 
the West-Saxon fyrd. If, as is probable, he was 
then at least fifteen years old, he would be born 
about 836, some twelve years before Alfred, and 
three years before his father's accession to the 
throne of Wessex. As Ethelswith was married in 
853, it seems likely that she was next to Ethelbald 
in age. If she were fifteen at the time of her mar- 
riage, she would be two years the junior of her eldest 
brother, and Ethelbert and Ethelred would then 
come between her and the youngest child, Alfred. 

Athelstan, the under-king of Kent, who signs 
charters from 841 to 850, and who gained a great 
naval victory over the Danes in 851, has been 
thought to be the son of Ethelwulf by an earlier 
marriage, but though this is possible, the evidence 
on the whole supports the theory that he was 
Ethelwulf 's brother, a younger son of Egbert, and 
that Egbert on his death, like Ethelwulf after 
him, divided his dominions, and granted the under- 
kingdom of Kent, with Surrey, Sussex, and Essex, 
to his second son, though his elder son retained 
the overlordship of the whole, with the direct 
government of Wessex. 

There is little to show what motive governed 
the choice of the names given to the children of 
Ethelwulf and Osburh. The Os stem in the 
names of Osburh and her father Oslac connects 
with the (Esir, Anses, or high gods of northern 
mythology, and was common in the royal houses 
of Northumbria. All Osburh's children, however, 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 69 

except Alfred, received names compounded with 
their father's Ethel prefix, which is found through- 
out England, and signifies "noble." Ethelbald 
and Ethelred were the namesakes of famous Mer- 
cian kings ; Ethelbert may have been called after 
the first Christian king of Kent. Alfred alone 
bore a name somewhat unusual in England in his 
time, with that Mlf or AIJ root which, like the 
Os stem, goes back to the old belief in CEsir and 
Alfar, Anses and Elves, the creative and sustaining 
forces of nature, the spirits of the earth and air. 

The prefix yE// or Alf was used in the royal 
families of Northumbria and East Anglia, and the 
name -Alfred or Alfred occurs, though somewhat 
rarely, in English documents before the birth of 
the child who was to make it illustrious and 
popular. In the first half of the ninth century it 
appears in lists of witnesses to charters in Hamp- 
shire, in Worcestershire, and in Berkshire, while 
in 831, an Alfred held the unexplained office of 
pedisecus at the court of Wiglaf of Mercia. 

If, in accordance with their traditional custom, 
the elves from whom King Alfred derived his. 
name presided over his birth, they brought rich 
gifts to his cradle, and endowed him with all the 
grace and virtue of a fairy prince of romance. 
Asser describes him as his parents' favourite, 
beloved by all, surpassing his brothers both in 
beauty of form and face, and in charm of speech 
and manner — "there from his Infancy appearing 
in him not only a sweetness of Favour and Coim- 



70 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

tenance above the rest, but also an Excellence 
of Spirit, of Wit and Disposition," in the stately 
seventeenth-century English of Sir John Spelman. 
Something must be allowed here for the natural 
partiality of a biographer for his hero, but the 
stories of Alfred's childhood that have been pre- 
served show him as a thoughtful, sensitive boy, 
with an eager curiosity, and an insatiable thirst 
for knowledge. Though Asser deplores the neglect 
of his early education, the West-Saxon court, in 
which he spent the greater part of his boyhood, 
was no bad training-school for a life of public duty 
and responsibility. A shifting scene, full of in- 
terest and variety, it was well suited to call out 
an intelligent child's powers of observation and 
reflection. 

The royal "vills," "hams," and "tuns" of 
Wessex and its dependencies were scattered up and 
down the country, and the King and Queen moved 
their gipsy-like caravan of children, retainers, and 
household goods from one hotl (dwelling) or setl 
(seat) to another, as occasion demanded. Christ- 
mas they often spent at the Dorset Dorchester, 
Easter at the Wiltshire Wilton, but they also 
wandered through the Home Counties and the 
shires of southern and western England. 

The itinerary of Ethelwulf and Osburh cannot 
be fully traced from the scanty indications in 
charters and chronicles, but Alfred's childish eyes 
must at least have often rested on the rolling chalk 
downs of Berkshire, Kent, and Surrey, the green 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 71 

valley of the Thames, the ancient cities of Win- 
chester and Canterbury, and the white stretches of 
Watling Street, that great Roman road which 
seemed to the Saxons like the star-strewn path of 
the Milky Way. The love of the "fair country- 
side, the fairest of God's creations," which breathes 
through his writings, must have grown with his 
growth among the woods and fields, the streams 
and grassy hills of his native land. 

From those early years in the wide open spaces 
and calm silences of nature, he probably drew 
much of the quiet strength and patience of his 
manhood. Nor was the human element wanting 
in his upbringing. About him, as the court trav- 
elled through the long leisurely day, or kept its 
modest state in the royal hall, would be a constant 
stir of life, the coming and going of officials and 
ministers, priests and soldiers, bishops like the 
saintly Swithun of Winchester, or the warlike 
Ealhstari of Sherborne, ealdormen like Eanwulf 
of Somerset or Osric of Dorset, fresh from fighting 
the Danes. 

The times were threatening, and there was grave 
talk among the West-Saxon nobles, and strenuous 
preparation, for the Northmen were busy on the 
Frisian coast and about the mouth of the Rhine, 
where in 850 the pirate Rorik, "gall of Christ- 
endom," secured a permanent base at Dorstadt, 
and became the Emperor's vassal. Alfred's first 
dream-like memories must have been of the viking 
invasions of his babyhood. The "heathen men" 



72 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

were to the English children of the early ninth 
century much what "Boney" and the French 
became to their descendants more than nine 
hundred years later, phantom shapes, all the more 
fearful because vague and undefined. 

It was probably detachments of Rorik's fol- 
lowers who fell upon England in 851, when Alfred 
was about three years old. Wessex and Kent were 
ready for them, and they met a gallant resistance. 
The men of Devon, under their ealdorman Ceorl, 
beat the invaders back from the south-west "with 
great slaughter " ; the Kentish under-king Athel- 
stan, with his ealdorman Ealhere, repulsed a naval 
attack on Sandwich, fighting, according to some 
manuscripts of the Chronicle, "on shipboard." 
Nine Danish boats were taken and the rest saved 
themselves by flight. 

Another great fleet of three hundred and fifty 
ships, which made for the estuary of the Thames, 
was more successful. Canterbury and London 
were stormed, Beorhtwulf, King of the Mercians, 
and his Jyrd were routed, and the vikings crossed 
the Thames and marched into Surrey. It would 
have gone hard with southern England had not 
Ethelwulf and his son Ethelbald at the head of 
the West-Saxon Jyrd checked the advance of the 
Danes and defeated them in the bloody battle 
of Aclea (Ockley, or Oakley). "There was the 
greatest slaughter in the heathen army that we 
have ever heard tell of to this present day," wrote 
the contemporary chronicler. 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 73 

An ancient tradition, still lingering in local song 
and legend in the nineteenth century, has placed 
this victory near the picturesque little Surrey 
village of Ockley, at the foot of a spur of the North 
Downs. Great Oakley in Essex has also made, 
with less reason, a similar claim. A third possible 
site, which on both philological and military 
grounds has something to be said in its favour, is 
Church Oakley, near Basingstoke in Hampshire. 
This place is called Adei in Domesday Book, where 
Ockley is written Hoclei. It is in the heart of 
Wessex, near the Roman road from Silchester to 
Winchester, which was probably the objective of 
the Danish march. But Ockley, too, is on a 
Roman road, the Stone Street or Stan Street, 
which ran from London to Chichester, and cut 
through the parallel ranges of the Downs and the 
great Andredsweald forest which lay between 
them. 

As the Chronicle expressly says that the Danes 
crossed the Thames into Surrey, while Ethelwerd 
adds that the battle was fought "near the wood 
which is called Aclea,^' the philological objection 
is hardly strong enough to necessitate the rejec- 
tion of the Ockley site. The vikings may have 
been trying to reach the south coast in order to 
meet their fleet coming from the Thames, with a 
view to an attack on Winchester from the sea.^ 

' A suggestion made by Mr. Maiden in the Victoria Co. Hist. 
For the controversy as to this site of. Vict. Co. Hist. Surrey, i., 
p. 331; Stevenson, Asser, p. 178, note on c. 5, 6; Cooksey, 



74 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

In any case, the strategy of this campaign suggests 
a power of organisation which should go far to 
exonerate Ethelwulf from charges of cowardice or 
indolence. 

He, with his eldest son, Ethelbald, and with 
Athelstan of Kent, had taken counsel with the 
West-Saxon witan at Wilton in 850. ^ The following 
year saw a well-planned defensive scheme bravely 
carried out — the local leaders with their followers 
watching the coasts, the King with the main army 
intercepting the enemy before a junction could be 
effected between their fleet and their land forces, 
and thus warding off the threatened danger from 
his chief city. 

This crowning victory of the "fortunate year" 
851 made a deep impression on men's minds. It 
was used as a date to reckon from, and Henry of 
Huntingdon, in the twelfth century, dwells upon 
it with evident pride, describing the fallen war- 
riors lying like corn beneath the sickle, the rivers 
of blood, and all the horrors of the ghastly field. 
"God," he concludes, "gave the fortune of war 
to those who believed in Him, and brought un- 
speakable destruction on those who despised Him." 
The ninth-century chronicler Prudentius of Troyes 
had the same thought when he wrote of Rorik's 
host, "part of them, attacking the island of Britain 
and the English, were defeated by them with the 
help of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club, 1904; Hilaire Belloc, 
The Stane Street, ' Birch, Cart. Sax., ii., p. 46, No. 459. 



8661 Childhood and Boyhood 75 

This idea of the struggle with the Danes as a 
holy war would be familiar to Alfred from his 
nursery days. The world as he first knew it must 
have seemed a place of conflict between the Christ- 
ian forces of light and the heathen powers of 
darkness. The saints and demons of his Catholic 
teaching would materialise as English and Danes 
when he listened to the stories of Hengestesdune 
and "Parret-mouth," Sandwich and Aclea, while 
the lust of battle was sanctified to him, as to the 
crusaders of a later age, by the sense of a just and 
righteous cause. The little sons of Ethel wulf may 
often have "played at vikings" before the days 
when play turned to grim reality. Alfred's one 
mention of childish games is of boys "riding their 
s;ticks" and imitating their elders.^ 
: If faith and patriotism thus combined to train 
and discipline the character of Alfred, there was 
also much in his surroundings to appeal to his 
imagination. From the green ridges above his 
birthplace looked down the mysterious "White 
Horse," work of a vanished race, destined to be 
associated with the victories of his own later years. 
Near by was "Way land's Smithy," the ancient 
sepulchral monument early said to be haunted 
by the magic smith of Northern mythology, "the 
famous and wise goldsmith Weland," as Alfred 
calls him in the Boethius.'' From the barrows on 
the downs, so legend told, the mighty dead came 
forth at night to sit before their doors. In marsh 

» BoetUus, XXXVI., § vi., p. io8. ' Ibid., XIX., p. 46. 



76 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

and fen might lurk monsters as fell as Beowulf's 
foe, the fire-breathing Grendel. Across the sea 
might still come floating an oarless ship, in which 
a royal child lay asleep among weapons, with a 
sheaf of corn at his head, like Alfred's fabled 
ancestor Sceaf, "the Sheaf." The fancies of an 
outworn creed mingled with the wonders of Christ- 
ian martyrology and saint-lore to people the earth 
with unseen presences and to lend enchantment 
to common things. 

Asser bears witness to Alfred's love for those 
old poems of his race, with which his retentive 
memory was stored. "By day and by night he 
would listen to them, hearing them constantly 
repeated." By day, perchance, as he rode from 
hall to hall in golden summer afternoons, by night, 
as he sat before the blazing wood-fire on frosty 
winter evenings, and saw visions in the flames 
while the gleeman sang to the sound of the harp. 

The only story of Alfred's childhood which has 
been preserved in detail prettily illustrates this 
early taste. 

One day [writes Asser] his mother showed a certain 
book of Saxon poems which she had in her hand to 
him and his brothers, and said, "I will give this 
manuscript to that one of you who can learn it first." 
Moved by these words, or rather by divine inspira- 
tion, and attracted by the beauty of the initial letter 
of the book, Alfred thus answered his mother, antici- 
pating his brothers, who were his seniors in years, but 
not in grace: "Will you," he said, "really give this 



8661 Childhood and Boyhood 77 

book to that one of us who can first understand it and 
repeat it to you?" With a glad smile, she assented. 
"I will give it," she said, "to that one." Then he, 
straightway taking the book from her hand, went to 
a master and read it. Having read it, he brought it 
back to his mother and repeated it. 

This seeming simple tale has been obscured by 
a cloud of controversy, raised chiefly by its in- 
consistency with Asser's previous statement that 
Alfred remained "illiterate" till the twelfth year 
of his age, or after, and by the improbability of a 
young child learning to read in a short space of 
time. Both difficulties are avoided by the sup- 
position that Alfred merely learnt to repeat the 
poems by heart, a view very generally adopted, 
but opposed by Mr. Plummer, who sees no way of 
escaping from the conclusion that Alfred actually 
read the book, since Asser distinctly says that 
"he went to a master and read it" {legit), while, 
though he afterwards "recited" it {recitavit) to his 
mother, the Latin recitare means simply "to read 
aloud," and is used by Asser himself in this sense 
in several passages. 

It may readily be granted that a clever boy of 
five or six years old could easily be taught to read 
a "set book" of poetry, but it is also probable that 
the constant repetition involved in the reading 
would impress the poems on his memory, and it 
may be pointed out that the classical recitare often 
implies the declamation of poems in public, and 
that in Alfred's translation of Orosius, it is ren- 



78 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

dered by the Anglo-Saxon singan and giddian, to 
sing and chant. ^ Indeed, with the few and well- 
loved books of childhood, "reading over and over 
again" passes almost insensibly into "knowing 
by heart." Alfred's mother, moreover, promised 
the book to the son who should "learn " it (discere) 
first, and the whole point of the anecdote as Asser 
tells it is tp show Alfred's precocious quickness and 
powers of memory, even before his regular edu- 
cation had begun. The attempts to settle the 
question by putting the incident later in Alfred's 
life, after his father's second marriage, may be 
dismissed as pure guesswork, unsupported by any 
contemporary evidence. The discussion has been 
unfortunate, in that it has diverted attention from 
certain points of deeper interest in the story. 

In spite of Asser' s complaints, Alfred seems to 
have been surrounded, at least in his very early 
childhood, by the influences of a cultivated home, 
where he learnt to know and prize books, to take 
pleasure in artistic skill, and to value the national 
treasure of folk-song. The taste and love of 
beauty which he afterwards displayed, the appre- 
ciation of English poetry which led him carefully 
to preserve the Anglo-Saxon songs, and to have 
them taught to his children, may have been in- 
herited from the grandfather who owed his educa- 
tion to the courts of Off a of Mercia and of Charles 
the Great, and from the father who kept in touch 
with Prankish learning and refinement, and whose 

I Orosius (I., XIIII.), XXI., pp. 56-7. Carmine . . . recitato. 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 79 

costly gifts of embroidery and English metal-work 
in gold and silver roused admiration even in 
luxurious Rome. 

The winning of the poetry book should probably 
be placed about the year 854, between Alfred's 
two visits to Rome. His sister, who is not men- 
tioned in connection with it, had then already left 
the West-Saxon court for a home of her own. The 
brothers who competed with Alfred were presum- 
ably the young Ethelbert and Ethelred, for Ethel- 
bald had long been engaged in public cares. - 

After the struggle of 851, the vikings, if a some- 
what doubtful entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
may be believed, spent the winter in the Isle of 
Thanet. They were certainly there in 853, when 
Ealhere and Huda, the ealdormen of Kent and 
Surrey, attacked them with their local forces, and 
were defeated after a bloody battle in which the 
two ealdormen fell. In 853, too, Burhred, the 
successor of Beorhtwulf on the Mercian throne, 
with his witan or council, sought the help of the 
West-Saxons against the North Welsh, and Ethel- 
wulf not only came to his assistance in person, 
but cemented the alliance by giving him the hand 
of his only daughter, Ethelswith. 

The marriage took place after Easter, according 
to Asser, in the "royal vill" {villa regia) of Chip- 
penham, in Wiltshire. ^ Alfred may already have 

! 
' It has been suggested by Professor Stenton, The Early History 
of the Abbey of Abingdon, pp. 28-9, that "the final recovery of 
Berkshire " by Wessex was connected with these negotiations. 



8o Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

started for the Continent, for it was in this year 
that his father first sent him to Rome with a great 
company of attendants, noble and non-noble. 
The embassy seems to have been intended to 
prepare the way for Ethelwulf's own journey, two 
years later. 

He had long cherished the idea of a pilgrimage 
to the shrines of the Apostles. As early as 839, 
he had sent ambassadors to the Emperor to ask 
permission to pass through the Prankish dominions 
on his way to worship at Rome, alleging as the 
cause of this pious resolve a vision seen by an 
English priest, who, rapt out of the body, learnt 
what great plagues and invasions of heathen men 
were in store for those Christians who would not 
repent of their sins. Why the little Alfred ac- 
companied the embassy of 853, "we may," with 
Sir John Spelman, "diversly conjecture, but not 
determine." 

Later legends put St. Swithun in charge of the 
expedition and made it the result of a dream in 
which Ethelwulf was directed by an angel to send 
his youngest son to the Pope, that he might receive 
the royal unction, and become the first of a long 

It may have been effected earlier, before Alfred's birth at Wan- 
tage, or this may have been due to the fact that the West-Saxon 
kings had ancient family estates in Berkshire. It was certainly 
completed by 860, when the Berkshire and Hampshire ealdormen 
united against the Danes who were attacking Winchester. " The 
cession of Berkshire," then, "may have been the price of Ethel- 
wulf's assistance to Burhred." The West-Saxon king grants 
Berkshire land to his thegn in 856. 



8661 Childhood and Boyhood 8i 

line of anointed kings of England. Legendary, 
also, in all probability, is the story reported by 
William of Malmesbury that Alfred was said to 
have first met his future literary adviser, Grimbald, 
on this journey, and never to have forgotten his 
kindly hospitality. All that is certainly known 
is that the embassy reached Rome in safety and 
that the child Alfred was warmly welcomed by 
the Pope, Leo IV. 

The building and fortification of the "Leonine 
City" had just been completed, and the English 
travellers must have wondered at the new gate of 
St. Peregrinus, with its proud inscription in honour 
of " Golden Rome," "Rome the head of the world," 
and the great walls with their forty-four strong 
towers. They must have heard tales, too, of the 
splendid dedication ceremony of June, 852, of the 
coronation of Louis 11. , the son of the Emperor 
Lothair, in 850, and of the naval victory over the 
Saracens off Ostia in 849. All around them were 
evidences of the destruction wrought by fire and 
sword, and evidences also of the wealth and piety 
which had hastened to repair those ravages. The 
ancient city of the Csesars was already almost 
transformed into the city of the Popes. Christian 
churches and monasteries, often built from the 
materials of older temples, clustered about the 
mighty ruins of imperial Rome — the forgotten 
monuments and deserted palaces, the silent Forum, 
the vast Coliseum, of which Anglo-Saxon pilgrims 
of the seventh century repeated the prophecy: 



82 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

"When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall, and 
when Rome falls, the world." 

These things were of the past: of the present 
were the shrines of St. Peter and St. Paul, newly- 
decorated after the Saracen raid by the lavish 
generosity of the Pope, the wonder-working relics 
of saints and martyrs, the endless stream of pil- 
grims, many of them English, pouring into the 
holy city at the call of penitence, of curiosity, or 
of devotion. 

By the middle of the ninth century, the Catholic 
Church had fallen from primitive simplicity into 
complexities of doctrine and a material conception 
of the spiritual life. The purgatorial system with 
its realistic presentation of the world beyond the 
grave, of the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, 
had long been elaborated with a Dante-like vivid- 
ness of detail. A Christian mythology, beautiful 
and terrible, was rapidly replacing the ancient 
polytheism of Rome or of the North. The sym- 
bolic expression, half original, half adapted from 
older forms of belief, fostered a spirit of mysticism 
in the educated, a crude superstition in the ig- 
norant. Visions and miracles, signs and tokens, 
strange deliverances and marvellous judgments, 
mingle with protests against magic and witch- 
craft in the literature of the time. While theolo- 
gians disputed over abstract questions of doctrine, 
transubstantiation, Trinitarianism, predestination, 
image- worship, the concrete relics of the saints 
were sought after with a passionate credulity, 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 83 

bought, stolen, translated from one church to 
another, magnificently enshrined, fervently wor- 
shipped, by learned and xmleamed, clergy and 
laity alike. 

Though Alfred only once, in his later writings, 
speaks of having seen Romeburh, no imaginative 
child, trained in the Christian faith, could fail to 
be deeply moved when he trod "the threshold of 
the Apostles," and knelt in awe before the shrines 
where so many English kings and pilgrims had 
knelt before him. 

An extant letter from Pope Leo IV. to Ethelwulf 
mentions his gracious reception of the young 
"Erf red," whom he has invested "as a spiritual 
son," with the belt and robes of the consular 
office. The entry in the Parker manuscript of the 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ for the year 853 apparently 
describes the same ceremony: "And in that year 
king Ethelwulf sent Alfred his son to Rome. 
Then was the lord Leo Pope in Rome, and he 
hallowed him to king and took him as bishop's 
son," or godson. 

The "taking as bishop's son," or "bishoping," 
probably means that the Pope, in accordance with 
early Catholic custom, was Alfred's sponsor in the 
rite of confirmation. This answers to the spiritual 
sonship of the papal letter, and was so understood 
by Asser, who writes that the Pope "anointed 
Alfred as king, and confirmed him, receiving him 
as the son of his adoption." Confirmation would 

' The earliest extant MS. Cf. infra, Chapter IX., p. 332 ff. 



84 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

involve unction, and it has been suggested that 
the investiture as consul to which the Pope refers, 
with the anointing which formed part of the con- 
firmation ceremony, were interpreted in the light 
of after events as regal unction, a "hallowing to 
king," which was worked up by later monkish 
historians into a formal coronation at Rome. 

The Chronicle and Asser, however, keep the 
* ' hallowing to king ' ' distinct from the ' ' bishoping, ' ' 
and their statements are so explicit that it seems 
impossible to doubt that the writers believed that 
some sort of royal anointing had taken place, an 
opinion presumably shared by Alfred himself. 
Both passages were almost certainly composed 
after Alfred's accession in 871, by men acquainted 
with the Latin annals and biographies of the 
Prankish Empire. The entry in the Chronicle, 
which is distinguished in the Parker manuscript 
by two marginal crosses, and is closely followed 
by Asser, shows Latin influence in the use of the 
word domne, ^ for dominus, lord, a Latinism, which 
is also found in the English version of Bede. The 
clerk who wrote it may well have had in mind such 
parallels as the papal unction of the two young 
sons of Charles the Great in 781, as kings of Italy 
and Aquitaine, or the anointing of Louis IL as 
Emperor in his father's lifetime, or he may, per- 
haps, have recalled how David, the youngest son, 
was anointed by the prophet as king in the midst 
of his brethren. 

^ Tha was domne Leo papa on Rome. 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 85 

When fate had swept away Alfred's three elder 
brothers in swift succession, and the memory of 
the visit to Rome had grown dim, it would be easy 
to attribute something of prophetic insight to the 
Pope, and to mistake the half -forgotten ceremony 
of consular investiture for regal unction, even with- 
out confusing it with the ritual of confirmation. 
The letter of Leo IV. makes it clear that the honour 
actually conferred on Alfred was the titular dignity 
of consul, which was granted somewhat freely by 
the Popes of the ninth century, when it had ceased 
to carry with it any real authority. The Byzan- 
tine splendour of the consular insignia may have 
caused them to be regarded by the English as 
royal robes. A consul, as Leo's letter implies, 
was girt like a king with a sword. He may also, 
at this late period, have been crowned with a 
golden diadem and invested with the purple and 
white cloak or trahea which was originally only 
worn by consuls in triumphs. ^ 

' Long afterwards, Alfred explained the Latin purpura as " the 
kingly robe," which betokened royal authority {Past. Care., 
XIV., pp. 84-5). It is quite possible that his own idea of the 
consular office was somewhat hazy. In his early writings he 
sometimes leaves the word consul untranslated, and sometimes 
renders it by ealdorman, while in the English version of Bede it is 
translated by "king" (cyning), when ^Etius, three times consul 
becomes " ^tius, thrice cyning" and Bede's consul is also ex- 
panded into consul and cyning {Bede, bk. i., c. xiii., pp. 48-9. 
Cf. pp. 8-9). In the Orosius, again, when Alfred inserts the 
story of Regulus, who would not be reappointed consul after he 
had been in slavery, he makes him refuse to be a king {cyning) 
{Orosius (IV.), VI., p. 178). Later on, when he was translating 



86 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

That the difficulties involved in the story of 
Alfred's regal unction were early felt, may be 
indicated by the fact that the Peterborough 
manuscript of the Chronicle (E) omits the incident 
altogether, while the late bilingual Canterbury 
manuscript (F) puts it after the death of Ethelwulf , 
and a spurious Winchester charter makes Ethel- 
wulf speak of it in connection with his own pilgrim- 
age in 855. Since, however, the anointing was 
performed by Leo IV., who died in July, 855, it 
must have occurred during Alfred's first visit to 
Rome, in 853. 

He was in England again in 855, when JEljred 
filius regis witnesses a Rochester charter,^ which 
is dated by Ethelwulf, "when I set out to go be- 
yond the sea to Rome." This charter is also wit- 
nessed by /Ethelherht rex, and it appears likely that 
Ethelwulf, on the eve of his departure, divided his 
dominions in the approved West-Saxon fashion, 
leaving his eldest son Ethelbald as regent of Wes- 
sex, and Ethelbert, his second son, as under-king 
of Kent. 

That he further made an attempt to conciliate 

Boethius, he seems to have decided that heretoga was the English 
equivalent for consul. Boethius, he says in the Introduction, was 
"a consul which we call heretoha," and he here consistently styles 
Regulus also heretoga, but it would not be surprising if, in the 
tentative beginnings of his literary work, he acquiesced in the 
description of his own consular investiture as a "hallowing to 
king." 

'Birch, Cart. Sax. ii., p. 86, No. 486; Kemble, Cod. Dipt., 
No. 276. 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 87 

both the clergy and the laity by promises and re- 
wards is probably the thread of truth in the tissue 
of fiction which veils the famous "Donation of 
Ethelwulf ." The Parker manuscript of the Chron- 
icle, under the year 855, has an entry: 

Here the heathen men first sat over winter in Sheppey. 
And that same year "booked" Ethelwulf king the 
tenth part of his land over all his kingdom to the 
praise of God and his own eternal health. 

In Asser's text this becomes : 

Ethelwulf, the aforesaid venerable king, freed the 
tenth part of his realm from all royal services and 
tribute, and offered it to God, the Three in One, in 
everlasting alms or inheritance, in the cross of Christ, 
for the redemption of his soul and the souls of his 
forefathers. 

Asser, then, apparently took the "booking," 
or granting by charter, of the Chronicle, to mean 
that Ethelwulf had given a tenth part of the king- 
dom to be held by the Church "in free and per- 
petual alms," quit of all public service save prayer 
and intercession. Such grants, on a smaller scale, 
were common enough, and the later confusion of 
Ethelwulf's gift with the grant of tithes has no 
basis beyond the recognition of the sacred char- 
acter of the tenth part. The monks afterwards 
supported Asser's view by spurious charters, 
framed in the interests of their own privileges and 
exemptions. Two genuine charters of 855 set the 



88 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

matter in a different light- One, the Rochester 
charter already cited, books lands to a thegn 
{minister) with full power of bequest, "for the 
tithing {decimatio) of fields which, God permitting, 
I have ordered to be made to my other thegns 
{ministri)y These lands, as the endorsement 
shows, were ultimately granted to a monastery. 
In the other charter,^ also a Rochester "book," 
witnessed by Ethelbearht rex and Elfred filius regis j 
in a meeting of the witan, Ethelwulf grants land 
to a thegn, quit of all royal services, "for the expia- 
tion of my sins and the absolution of my crimes." 

Mr. Stevenson has pointed out that in land 
grants to laymen, which contain exemptions from 
worldly services, and expressions of penitence and 
pious hope, there was generally "an understood 
reversion" to religious uses, and that in many 
cases there is proof that such reversion had actu- 
ally taken place. He concludes that Ethelwulf 
"booked" a tenth part of his own lands to his 
thegns in the first instance, with reversion to the 
Church after the deaths of the grantees.* If this 
be so, it may imply a desire on Ethelwulf's part 
to promote the internal peace and harmony of his 
kingdom during his absence at a critical juncture. 

The outlook for Wessex was, indeed, dark in 
855, with the vikings settled on the coast of Kent, 
and the whole of the North Sea and English Chan- 

' Cart. Sax., ii., p. 62, No. 467; K. C. D., No. 269. It is 
dated 855, but the indiction is wrong, and it may belong to 853, 
» Stevenson, Asser, p. 186, note on c. 11, 2. 



8661 Childhood and Boyhood 89 

nel, from Frisia to Aquitaine, swept by their fleets. 
They harried the country about the Scheldt, sailed 
plundering up the Seine, and sacked and burnt the 
cities on the Loire, Nantes and Angers, Tours and 
Blois. Their leaders are now often mentioned by 
name in the Prankish chronicles, Rorik and Guth- 
rum and Godfred, pirates of royal birth, Sihtric 
and Bjorn, the raiders of the valley of the Seine. 

In England the Danes had settled in the Isle 
of Sheppey in the east, and were threatening 
Mercia from the west. A charter of Burhred, the 
Mercian King, is dated in 855, "when the pagans 
were in the country of the Wrekin {in Wreocen- 
setnu)." In this same year also, "Horm, chief of 
Black Gentiles," was killed by the Welsh King 
Roderick ap Merfyn. 

Yet Ethelwulf hardly deserves the reproaches 
which have been heaped upon him for going on 
pilgrimage instead of remaining at home to defend 
his kingdom. He had waited long before carrying 
out the scheme which he had planned at the be- 
ginning of his reign. He was growing old, as men 
counted age when public life began almost in 
childhood, and disease and death often came pre- 
maturely. Judged by contemporary standards, 
his action probably appeared altogether admirable, 
the crown of a virtuous life. 

The Prankish annals duly record how "Edilvulf, 
King of the Anglo-Saxons," was honourably re- 
ceived on his way to Rome by Charles the Bald, 
King of the West Pranks, and how he was con- 



90 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

ducted to the frontier with all royal observances. 
Asser alone notes that Alfred accompanied his 
father, who "loved him more than his other sons." 
It may be that the child was already motherless, 
for Ethelwulf married his second wife only a year 
later. Sorrow for Osburh's death may even have 
been one of the compelling causes of his journey, 
but here all the contemporary authorities are 
silent. 

The English pilgrims may have reached the 
Holy City before the death of the old Pope Leo IV., 
in the middle of July, 855. They must certainly 
have witnessed the disorderly scenes which fol- 
lowed the election of his successor, Benedict III., 
who was opposed by a strong party in Rome. The 
papal biographer gives a list of the splendid gifts 
which the West-Saxon King offered to Pope Bene- 
dict, among them a crown of pure gold, a sword 
ornamented with gold, and a gold-embroidered 
tunic, royal insignia, it would seem. Rich stuffs, 
golden vases and images, and four silver-gilt 
gahatcE or hanging lamps, '^ "of Saxon workman- 
ship," are also mentioned, with largesse of gold 
to the Roman clergy and nobles, and of silver to 
the common people. 

A later story, which comes from William of 
Malmesbury, makes Ethelwulf restore the "Saxon 
School" in Rome, which had been destroyed by 
fire, and establish a tribute of "Peter's Pence" or 
Romescot, to maintain it. It was to commemorate 

» Cf. infra, Chapter VIII., p. 296. 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 91 

this tradition that Raphael introduced the figure 
of Ethelwulf into his Vatican fresco, Vincendia del 
Borgo, with the inscription "Astulphus, king of 
England, came here as a pilgrim and gave tribute." 

The Borgo or Burgus, so-called from the Anglo- 
Saxon burh, was the name given to the English 
settlement on the Vatican Hill, which was also 
called the Schola Saxonum in the ninth century, 
though the schola seems originally to have meant 
the whole body of "Saxon" settlers, the "English 
colony," organised on military lines for purposes 
of defence. "" The Vicus Saxonum, a district which 
stretched from the palace of Nero to the banks of 
the Tiber, included the scholce or schools of the 
other Germanic races, Frisians, Franks, and Lom- 
bards. The "Saxon School" was burnt down 
early in the ninth century, and again at the begin- 
ning of the pontificate of Leo IV., who was said 
to have checked the flames by making the sign of 
the cross. Leo himself rebuilt the church of S. 
Maria, now represented by the church and hospital 
of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Saxia, or "Saxony," on 
the site of the ancient burh, and the Germanic 
scholcB formed part of the new walled "Leonine 
City." 

Ethelwulf's share in the work of restoration, 
though not unlikely in itself, is not mentioned by 
early writers, and the idea that he began the pay- 
ment of "Peter's Pence," an older and rather ob- 
scure tribute to the Papacy, was probably due to 

' Stevenson, Asser, p. 243, note on c. 46, 10. 



92 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

some confusion between his personal gifts in 855 
and the bequests to Rome in his will. A spurious 
charter of post-Conquest date even makes Ethel- 
wulf establish the English School to serve God 
day and night for the benefit of his people. An- 
other story relates how he obtained exemption from 
working in chains for the English criminals in 
Rome. 

These trivial tales serve at least to show the 
impression made by Ethel wulf's visit to Rome, 
and by his pious munificence and devotion. It 
was with a true instinct that Raphael in his fresco 
placed him side by side with a later papal tribu- 
tary, Godfrey de Bouillon, one of the leaders of the 
first Crusade. The pilgrim kings of the eighth 
and ninth centuries were, in truth, the forerunners 
of the crusading kings of the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries, and, like them, they won a posthumous 
and legendary fame, in which romance and reality 
are strangely intermingled. 

After a year's sojourn in Rome, Ethelwulf 
turned his steps homewards. He must have been 
at the West Prankish court by the summer of 856, 
when he was betrothed to Judith, the young 
daughter of Charles the Bald, the granddaughter 
of that earlier Judith whose charm and ambition 
had brought such disaster on the Empire. 

The marriage was celebrated on the first of 
October, in the royal palace at Verberie near 
Senlis. There is no warrant in ninth-century 
sources for the modern view that the union was 





THE ALFRED JUBILEE MEDAL OF 1849 




THE RING OF ETHELSWITH, KING 
ALFRED'S SISTER, WIFE OF 
BURHRED OF MERCIA 
(British Museum) 




THE RING OF ETHELWULF 
(British Museum) 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 93 

the result of deep-laid political schemes, the seal 
of an alliance between West-Saxons and West 
Franks against their common foes the Northmen. 
What seems to have chiefly struck the chroniclers 
who do more than merely mention the marriage 
is the fact that Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, 
blessed the bride, crowned her with a diadem, and 
gave her the name of queen, contrary to West- 
Saxon custom, and that she was afterwards per- 
mitted to sit by her husband's side on the royal 
throne. 

If Asser may be believed, the reason for the in- 
ferior position accorded to the West-Saxon queen 
was to be sought in the horror felt for the crimes 
of Eadburh, daughter of Offa of Mercia, and wife 
of Beorhtric of Wessex. When her husband died of 
the poison prepared by her for her enemies, she 
fled, so runs the story, to the court of Charles 
the Great. Charles asked her, with a grim jocu- 
larity, whether she would prefer to marry him or 
his son. She chose the son for his youth, where- 
upon the great King said, with a smile: "Had you 
chosen me, you should have had my son ; since you 
have chosen my son, you shall have neither him 
nor me." Eadburh was then appointed abbess of 
a nunnery, but in a few years she was deprived of 
her post, on account of the wickedness of her life, 
and she eventually died in great poverty and 
misery at Pavia, where she was frequently seen, 
accompanied by one servant, begging her daily 
bread. "I often heard this," says Asser, "from 



94 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

my lord Alfred, the truth- telling King of the Anglo- 
Saxons, as he had heard it from a number of truth- 
ful witnesses, many of whom could remember the 
events." 

The anecdote is worth preserving, both as an 
illustration of the taste of the time, and as an 
early link between England and that legendary 
history of Charlemagne which was already grow- 
ing up on the Continent. The literary relations be- 
tween Wessex and "Frankland" had, indeed, long 
been close and friendly. Ethelwulf had a Prankish 
secretary, and corresponded with Lupus Servatus, 
the learned abbot of Ferrieres. At a slightly 
later date Asser's writing shows marked traces 
of Prankish influence, while the Prankish annal- 
ists are generally well-informed on English affairs. 

The actual form of service used by Hincmar of 
Rheims at the marriage of Ethelwulf and Judith 
is still extant, and the chronicler Prudentius of 
Troyes speaks of the pomp and state of the yoimg 
Queen's journey to her island kingdom. Though 
she was a mere child, of twelve or thirteen years 
old, while her husband was a man of about fifty, 
with grown-up sons, there is no indication that 
the marriage roused dissatisfaction in Wessex. 
Asser, however, states that on Ethelwulf's return 
from Rome, though the people received him gladly, 
he was met by a serious revolt on the part of his 
eldest son Ethelbald, who conspired with Ealhstan, 
Bishop of Sherborne, and Eanwulf, ealdorman of 
Somerset, to exclude his father from the throne. 



i 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 95 

The rebels gathered west of the forest of Selwood, 
in the Dorset and Somersetshire district ; the West- 
Saxon nobles were divided against themselves, 
and the country was on the verge of civil war, when 
Ethelwulf, with "excessive clemency," refused 
his people's offers of help, and consented to divide 
his kingdom with his son, leaving Ethelbald to 
rule in Wessex, while he himself retired to the 
"eastern provinces" of Kent and its dependencies, 
though he probably retained the suzerainty or 
overlordship throughout his dominions. The 
whole account reads much like a page of Carolin- 
gian history: the undutiful son, the trusted coun- 
cillors betraying their master, the division of the 
realm, even the marriage of the old King to a 
ypung wife, of whom his elder children might well 
be jealous — all have their parallels in the Prankish 
annals. 

Since the Parker manuscript of the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle altogether ignores the rising, 
and merely says that Ethelwulf came to his people, 
and they were fain (glad) thereof, Asser's narra- 
tive has been regarded with suspicion. The same 
Chronicle, however, also passes over in silence the 
undoubted marriage of Ethelbald with his father's 
widow, and Asser's story is borne out by the reck- 
oning of five years to Ethelbald's reign in the 
Parker Chronicle, and in the West-Saxon regnal 
tables, while the Annals of St. Neots put Ethel- 
wulf's death in 857 and make Ethelbald reign two 
and a half years jointly with his father, and two 



96 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

and a half years alone. As Ethelbald died in 860, 
this would fix his accession in 855, the year when 
Ethelwulf went to Rome. The papal records, 
too, state that Ethelwulf "left his possessions and 
lost his own kingdom" for the sake of his Roman 
pilgrimage. The Anglo-Saxon and Prankish au- 
thorities agree in placing his death about two 
years after his return, in 858. 

He was buried at Winchester, or, according to a 
curious entry in the Annals of St. Neots, at the 
little royal ham of Steyning in Sussex. His will, 
known only from the description in Asser and from 
the mention in the will of Alfred of "the writing 
concerning the heritage of King Athulf," appears 
to have divided the kingdom between Ethelbald 
and Ethelbert, and to have left his family lands 
to his children and kinsmen, and his personal 
property to his sons and his nobles, with consider- 
able bequests for religious and charitable purposes. 

He decreed, if Asser may be trusted, that for 
the good of his soul one poor man should be fed 
and clothed for ever from every ten hides of his 
hereditary lands which were cultivated and in- 
habited. He also gave a sum of three hundred 
mancuses, or some forty pounds, a year, to Rome, 
two-thirds of it to keep up the lights in the churches 
of St. Peter and St. Paul, and one-third as an offer- 
ing to the Pope. These clauses have often been 
connected with the grant of tithes and the tribute 
of Peter's Pence, and Ethelwulf's will has been 
confused with his earlier "Donation." There is 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 97 

some justification for this in the fact that, except 
for the continued payment of Peter's Pence, there 
is no evidence that the provisions of the will were 
carried out, nor, indeed, could the King legally lay 
a permanent charge on his family lands, in which 
he had only a life interest, though he could, doubt- 
less, express a pious wish, and trust for its fulfil- 
ment to the charity of his successors. 

Ethelbald's short reign as sole King was un- 
eventful for Wessex. He shocked public senti- 
ment by marrying his father's child-widow Judith, 
won a certain meed of praise by his benefactions 
to the monks of Abingdon, died prematurely, and 
was buried at Sherborne, in the diocese of his 
friend, Ealhstan, that " Selwood-shire " which had 
been the scene of his revolt against his father. 
No panegyric follows the brief notice of his death 
and burial in the Chronicle, nor need Henry of 
Huntingdon's rhetorical phrases be taken seriously 
when he writes : "All England wept for the youth 
of King Ethelbald, and there was great lamentation 
over him. . . . England felt afterwards how 
much she had lost in him," 

Judith, widowed a second time while still in 
her teens, sold her lands in England and retired 
to Senlis, where she lived in queenly state under 
the guardianship of the bishop and of her father 
Charles the Bald, until she incurred the ban of 
the Church by eloping with the Count of Flanders, 
Baldwin of the Iron Arm. That she cherished 
kindly memories of her English sojourn would 



98 Alfred the Truthteller t848- 

seem to be indicated by the later marriage of her 
son Baldwin II. to Alfred's daughter ^Ifthryth, 
the ancestress of Matilda of Flanders, wife of 
William the Conqueror. 

On Ethelbald's death, Ethelwulf's second son, 
already under-king of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and 
Essex, became King of Wessex also. Contrary 
to the custom of his house, he delegated no portion 
of his authority to his younger brothers, possibly 
because Ethelred and Alfred were too inexperienced 
to be placed in responsible positions in dangerous 
times. 

While England enjoyed immunity from viking 
ravages, every year in the Prankish annals has its 
tale of raids and sacrilege, of wasted villages and 
burning towns. In each great river, Somme or 
Seine, Loire or Rhone, rode a pirate fleet, generally 
with an island base for winter quarters. Favoured 
by the perennial dissensions in the Carolingian 
house, the Northmen sacked Paris in the Christ- 
mas season of 856, a deed of horror and audacity 
which seemed to those who chronicled it like the 
profanation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. 
Orleans, Blois, Chartres, suffered in turn, the 
valley of the Rhone was devastated, and in 860 
the vikings even coasted along the Mediterranean 
shore, and burnt Pisa and other cities. 

It was in 860, too, shortly after Ethelbert's 
accession, that the Danes of the Somme, led, ap- 
parently, by one Weland or Volund, attacked 
Wessex. Charles the Bald had tried to bribe 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 99 

them to drive their brother pirates from the Seine, 
but in spite of heavy taxation he failed to raise 
the requisite sum, and while waiting for payment 
the fleet slipped across the Channel, sailed up 
Southampton Water, and plundered Winchester 
before the fyrd could intercept and repulse them. 
"There came up a great host of ships, a sciphere,'* 
says the chronicler, "and 'broke' Winchester, and 
against that host fought Osric ealdorman with 
Hamptonshire and Ethelwulf ealdorman with 
Berkshire, and put the host to flight, and held the 
place of slaughter." 

The defeated raiders recrossed the Channel, and 
for five years England was again at peace, lying 
in a breathless calm, on the edge of the storm which 
still swept the Continent. 

In 861, Charles the Bald, exasperated by a 
second sack of Paris, succeeded in persuading 
Weland to besiege the island settlement of the 
vikings of the Seine, but the device of setting a 
thief to catch a thief was no more successful than 
in later days in England. The besieged bought 
off their besiegers, and took up winter quarters 
with them. Charles now resorted to the wiser 
policy of systematically fortifying and guarding 
the banks of the river, and by a fortunate victory 
he forced the Danes to come to terms. Weland 
did homage, and ultimately accepted Christianity. 

Meantime, the vigilance and energy of Robert 
the Brave, Count of Anjou, kept the pirates of 
the Loire in check, but the struggle was fierce and 



100 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

continuous, and the inhabitants of the western 
kingdoms lived in daily terror of death and out- 
rage at the hands of the Northmen, while across 
the eastern frontier of the Empire poured a new 
and even more terrible enemy, the savage Ungri 
or Huns, whose coming Hincmar of Rheims 
reluctantly chronicles. 

It was in 865 that the vikings, who had been 
ravaging the banks of the Rhine in the previous 
year, appeared once more off the Kentish coast, 
and settled in the Isle of Thanet. The men of 
Kent adopted an expedient which had already 
been tried by the West Franks: they bought off 
the invaders, only to find that "during the peace 
and the promise of money, the army {here) stole 
away by night and harried all Kent eastwards." 
It is noteworthy that neither king nor ealdorman 
is mentioned in connection with this raid and the 
previous negotiations. The "men of Kent" seem 
to have acted quite independently. It may be that 
the sands of Ethelbert's life were already running 
low. The Chronicle assigns him a reign of five 
years, puts his accession in 860, and makes Ethel- 
red succeed him in 866. Hence he probably died 
either late in 865, or early in the following year. 

The Northmen timed their attacks wisely, when 
the kingdoms they invaded were weak, or divided 
against themselves. On all sides danger threat- 
ened when Ethelbert was laid beside his brother 
Ethelbald at Sherborne. Asser and the Chronicle 
alike praise the peace and honour of his reign, 



8661 Childhood and Boyhood loi 

repeating, perhaps, Alfred's own idealised recol- 
lections of those few quiet years in the midst of 
strife, a Golden Age, when men could sleep in 
security, with no fear of the pirate fleet. * It is to 
this time that the famous passage in Asser's Life 
of Alfred must apply, where he describes the 
talented boy, conscious of intellectual power, 
thirsting for knowledge, eagerly learning Anglo- 
Saxon poetry by heart, but remaining " imlettered" 
{ilUteratus) till the twelfth year of his age, or later, 
owing to the carelessness of his parents and 
guardians. 

Whether "unlettered" be taken to mean merely 
ignorant of Latin, as has been suggested, or alto- 
gether untaught, it is likely enough that from 
Alfred's return from his second journey to Rome, 
when he was about eight years old, to the accession 
of Ethelbert, when he was in his twelfth or thir- 
teenth year, his formal education was neglected 
by his father and elder brother. Absorbed in the 
cares of state and the pleasures of the court, they 
would give small thought to the unusual aptitude 
for learning shown by the child Alfred. Asser 
tells how in later days the great King was wont to 
lament that when he had youth and leisure he 
could find no master to teach him, and Alfred's 
preface to the Pastoral Care of Gregory the Great 
notes the lack of scholars in Wessex when he came 
to the throne in 871. Yet ten years earlier, after 
Ethelbert's accession, he apparently learnt to read 

^Boethius, XV., p. 34. 



102 Alfred the Truthteller [848- 

without difficulty, and, perhaps, began the com- 
pilation of the little book of Hours, psalms, and 
prayers, which Asser saw long afterwards. 

The decay of learning in Wessex was, doubtless, 
gradual, and the Danish wars hastened the slow 
literary decline which probably set in with the 
death of Ethelwulf. St. Swithun, one of the last 
representatives of the old tradition, only died in 
86 1, shortly after the sack of his cathedral city by 
the Northmen, and his influence must have lin- 
gered for a while among those who had known him. 
Alfred himself could remember how, before the 
viking ravages, the churches throughout all 
England were filled with treasures and books. 

When, in his maturity, the King found the long- 
desired opportunity to carry out his educational 
schemes, memories of his boyhood may have 
f suggested the lines of study he laid down for his 
' children and for the pupils in his court school — 
psalms, and Anglo-Saxon books and songs, with 
reading and writing in both Anglo-Saxon and 
Latin, a training in "liberal arts" which should 
precede the strenuous physical discipline of hunting 
and other bodily exercises. 

In Ethelbert's peaceful days Alfred himself may 
first have learnt the hunter's craft for which he 
was renowned, notwithstanding the delicacy which 
hung about him from his infancy. His signature 
as filius ^regis appended to his brother's charters 
implies that he continued to follow the court in 
its wanderings through the country. From these 



866] Childhood and Boyhood 103 

scattered indications, then, it is possible to gain 
some idea of the external conditions under which 
he passed the years of childhood and early youth, 
those years of growing curiosity in the world of 
men and affairs, of dawning ambition and uneasy 
self-realisation. 

Of his inner life and the workings of his mind 
and conscience less has been revealed, though 
Asser has left it on record that "from his cradle 
he desired wisdom before all things." ' Tempera- 
ment and experience would combine to make him 
thoughtful beyond his age, and to rouse his sense 
of responsibility. To the child, nurtured in the 
doctrines of the Catholic Church, who had seen 
Rome and the West Prankish court, and had 
heard of the ancient splendour of the Empire, 
learning and godliness must have seemed the 
highest good. The vision of his manhood may 
have flashed upon his boyish eyes, that high ideal 
of an ordered Christian State, of a contented and 
God-fearing people, ruled by a king and an aris- 
tocracy using the knowledge that is power for 
the well-being of the community. 

Touches of human feeling redeem Asser's con- 
fused and wordy account of his hero's precocious 
piety, his zeal in almsgiving, his prayers as he lay 
prostrate before the shrines of saints, the illness 
called ficus which God sent in answer to his peti- 
tion for an infirmity which should chasten without 
disfiguring or incapacitating him. His ecstasies 
and prayers were but the natural expression of 



104 Alfred the Truthteller [848-866] 

spiritual crises in a boy for whom religion had 
opened the gates of emotion. 

Such psychological phenomena are not confined 
to any one age, or form of faith. The disciple of 
Wesley, bemoaning his sins at night in the dark 
garden, the youthful Francis of Assisi, publicly 
beggaring himself for love of his fellows, were of 
the same stuff as the stripling Alfred, rising at 
cockcrow to pour out his passionate heart before 
God and the saints. Devout, imaginative, stu- 
dious, he must have shrunk from the rough con- 
tact of the actual world, the scandals and quarrels 
in the Imperial house, the arrogance and corrup- 
tion of the Papacy, the ruthless cruelty of the 
heathen Northmen. Where he looked for civil- 
isation he found deepening barbarism, where he 
sought a contemplative seclusion, he was forced 
into violent action. 

Of all his biographers, Sir John Spelman, who 
had seen something of the Civil War in England, 
and knew how it fared with scholarly spirits fallen 
upon unquiet days, has best appreciated the suffer- 
ing of the young Alfred, who thirsted more after 
literature than either possessions or sovereignty. 

But [as he finely concludes] He that had a Work 
for him to do, of which he little ever thought, had 
provided him a School, which, though nothing accept- 
able in Appearance, was far more proper to enable 
him for the service that he was to do than were the 
Schools of Letters. And that was the School of 
Travel [travail] and Adversity. 



CHAPTER IV 

^LFREDUS SECUNDARIUS 
866-871 

WITH Ethelred's accession Alfred was drawn 
into the full current of public life. Though 
he was not entrusted with the independent govern- 
ment of an under-kingdom, and continued to sign 
charters merely as filius regis, he enjoyed the first 
place in his brother's counsels, and Asser speaks of 
him as secundarius, a term implying, apparently, 
some kind of authorised viceroyalty, connected, 
it may be, with his position as next in the line of 
succession to the West- Saxon throne. 

Ethelred has been described as Alfred's favour- 
ite brother, and it is possible that nearness of age, 
early associations, and the premature deaths of 
Ethelbald and Ethelbert would create a specially 
close relation between the survivors. Together 
they had watched their parents and their royal 
brothers successively pass away. Together they 
were now called upon to face the greatest danger 
which had threatened England within the memory 
of man. 

105 



io6 Alfred the Truthteller tsee- 

In 866, the year in which Ethelred "took" the 
West-Saxon kingdom, "a great army {micel here), 
came to the land of the EngUsh and wintered in 
East Angha, and were 'horsed' there, and the 
East- Angles made peace with them." Thus runs 
the entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, significant 
in its brevity: the first ominous note of the war- 
storm that was about to burst on the devoted 
country. This was no simple coasting raid, no 
casual river expedition, or harrying from an island 
base. It was the beginning of a deliberate sys- 
tematic policy of conquest and settlement on the 
mainland. The flat rolling pastures of East Anglia, 
with their herds of grazing horses, seem to have 
offered an easy prey. The vikings left their ships 
and transformed themselves into mounted infantry, 
fighting still on foot, but riding on their foraging 
inroads, and sweeping the countryside, as an old 
author notes, after the fashion of the " dragooners," 
or mounted foot-soldiers of the German wars of 
the seventeenth century. The East-Anglian folk, 
like the men of Kent before them, bowed to the 
inevitable, and made a precarious peace with their 
unwelcome visitors. 

The vikings now turned to fresh fields of plunder 
and conquest. They crossed the Humber into 
Deira and seized York, the ancient Roman city 
of Eboracum. Northumbria was rent at the 
moment by civil war. ^Ue, a usurper, was dis- 
puting the crown with the rightful ruler Osbert, 
and the pressure of a common danger united the 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 107 

rivals too late. They led a my eel fyrd against 
York, where the invaders had taken up a defensive 
position behind the crumbling walls. The North- 
umbrians broke into the city on March 21, 867, 
only to be defeated with fearful slaughter in a 
savage hand-to-hand struggle. ^Ue and Osbert 
fell, and the exhausted remnant of the army made 
peace with the Danes. 

The legends which have gathered round this 
Northumbrian campaign and round the East- 
Anglian raids which preceded and followed it bear 
witness to the general recognition in the popular 
mind of the importance of the crisis. No imper- 
sonal political cause seemed sufificient for such 
great disasters. Love, hate, and revenge, the primi- 
tive passions, were evoked to account for the 
misfortunes which had befallen England, and the 
invasion of Northumbria was woven into the saga 
of the mysterious Ragnar Lodbrok and his sons. 
By the twelfth century the Viking Age had become 
matter for romance, and tales were current in 
England of the betrayal of a beautiful North- 
umbrian woman by one of the rival kings — Osbert 
in one version, ^lle in another, — of the rebellion 
of her kinsmen, and the calling in of the Danes by 
her outraged husband. Another tradition makes 
.^Ue cast the famous viking Ragnar Lodbrok into 
a pit full of serpents, and the Northumbrian ex- 
pedition is undertaken by Ragnar's sons, Ingvar 
and Ubba, to avenge their father's murder. They 
take iElle prisoner and put him to death with 



io8 Alfred the Truthteller isee- 

horrible tortures. A third story connects Ragnar 
Lodbrok with East Anglia. He is cast ashore on 
the coast, received hospitably by King Edmund, 
and murdered by a jealous huntsman, who is then 
sent adrift in Lodbrok' s boat, and, landing in 
Denmark, accuses Edmund of the murder of the 
Scandinavian chief. Ragnar's sons, Hingvar and 
Hubba, invade East Anglia and martyr Edmund, 
"Christ's most blessed Confessor." 

In all these romances the leader of the vikings 
is Ingvar, Hingvar, or Ivar, the " Ivar the Boneless" 
of the sagas, the crafty son of Ragnar, whose 
quickness of wit more than compensates for his 
weakness of body. He is the brain of the English 
expeditions, a man of foxlike cunning, wily and 
astute, a typical Norman statesman, while his 
brother, Ubba or Hubba, is the typical Norman 
soldier, brave, strong, and persistent. 

Fact and fiction are inextricably mingled in the 
history of the three brothers, "Hingwar, Hubba, 
and Healfdene," whom English mediaeval tradition 
has associated with the Danish wars of the ninth 
century. They were, almost certainly, of Danish 
origin, yet Hubba is described as dux Frisiorum, 
leader of the Frisians, while Hingwar has been, 
with much probability, identified with Ivar the 
comrade of Olaf the White, the Norse King of 
Dublin, who raided western Scotland in 870, and 
brought a great spoil of English, British, and Pict- 
ish captives to Ireland. The Irish annals call 
Ivar "King of the Northmen of all Ireland and 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 109 

Britain," and make him the brother and successor 
of Olaf the White. The later Enghsh and Con- 
tinental chroniclers know only" the tyrant Ingvar," 
most cruel of all the pirate kings. In the strictly 
contemporary accounts, the Anglo-Saxon Chron- 
icle and Asser, he is merely mentioned incidentally 
as the brother of Healfdene. The sagas replace 
Ubba and Healfdene by the half -mythical "Snake 
Eye," " White Shirt," and Bjorn Ironside. The 
Irish sources give him, in addition to Olaf, a 
younger brother, Oisla or Avisle, whom, in con- 
junction with Olaf, he murders "with guile and 
parricide." 

From this confusion of detail it may perhaps be 
inferred that the great adventure of the conquest 
of Britain attracted rovers from far and near, 
vultures hovering over the doomed quarry. Ivar 
may have come from Ireland, Ubba from the 
Danish settlements in Frisia, Healfdene from Den- 
mark itself, or from the Continent. A fourth "son 
of Ragnar," Bjorn, is found among the vikings of 
the Seine, and possibly also in the perilous voyages 
to Spain and northern Italy. The clans would 
rally to the sound of battle, and kinsmen would 
gather together in the land of promise, as, in the 
eleventh century, the sons of the Norman house 
of Hauteville, descendants of the vikings, over- 
spread the fertile provinces of southern Italy and 
Sicily. To Alfred and his fellows, at least, these 
shadowy pirate chiefs must have been substantial 
enough, and the question of the hour was how to 



no Alfred the Truthteller [866- 

meet the imminent peril of their further incursions 
into the heart of England. 

In 868 the host of Ivar and Ubba marched from 
York southwards into Mercia. They left behind 
a puppet king, one Egbert, to rule the country 
north of Tyne, but they seem to have kept Deira 
in their own hands, using York as a base of 
operations. 

The southern kingdoms were not unprepared 
for their coming. The bonds between Mercia 
and Wessex were drawn closer by the marriage of 
Alfred to the daughter of a Mercian ealdorman, 
and when news arrived of the approach of the 
pagan army, Burhred, the Mercian King, and his 
witan, at once appealed for help to Ethelred of 
Wessex and his brother Alfred, to whom Asser 
now gives the title of secundarius. The mention 
of Alfred in conjunction with his brother, marked 
by a marginal cross in the Parker manuscript of 
the Chronicle, bears out the theory that he held 
a recognised position of authority. 

The united fyrds of Mercia and Wessex met the 
invaders at Nottingham on the Trent, one of the 
"Five Boroughs" of the later Danelaw, where they 
had apparently either thrown up an earthwork, 
a geweorc, as winter quarters, or occupied an al- 
ready existing camp. Here Alfred had his first 
sight of the vikings, but there was little fighting, 
since, though the fort withstood the attacks of 
the English, the pagans consented to make terms. 
Burhred allowed them to remain at Nottingham 




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871] -^Ifredus Secundarius iii 

till the spring, when they returned to York, and 
"sat there," says the Chronicle, "one year," pre- 
paring, perhaps, for a more daring enterprise. 
In 870, the here, a compact and disciplined body 
of horsemen, rode through Mercia into East Anglia, 
burning and plundering the rich monasteries of 
the fenland on their way to winter quarters at 
Thetford in Norfolk. 

A stream of ecclesiastical legend here combines 
with the secular traditions of the heroic struggle 
to obscure the actual sequence of events. Yet 
the main incidents of the story, as told by the 
English historians of the twelfth century, and by 
the picturesque mediaeval forger "Ingulf of Croy- 
land," may be accepted as true in the spirit, if 
not in the letter. These chroniclers describe the 
ruthless march of the heathen army, the gallant 
but hopeless stand of the men of Lindsey under 
their local leaders, the stately abbeys and religious 
houses going up in flames, Bardney and Croyland, 
Medeshamstede or Peterborough, "once full rich, 
but now brought to naught," and the water-girt 
Ely. They dwell on the slaughter of monks and 
nuns, the scattering of the relics of the saints, the 
destruction of manuscripts, the loss of church 
treasures, the torture and suffering, softened by a 
touch of nature when the viking chief saves the 
life of a beautiful child in the sack of Croyland. 

The men who lived through such experiences 
as these had neither time nor heart to write about 
them, but many vivid details would be preserved 



112 Alfred the Truthteller tses- 

in the memory of the people, a store of material 
for those who came after. Such may have been 
the origin of the history of St. Edmund which was 
told by his armour-bearer to St. Dunstan, and 
transmitted to his tenth-century biographer, Abbo 
of Fleury. 

In the winter months the Danes took up a strong 
position at Thetford, where the river Thet joins the 
Little Ouse. The East-Anglians gave them battle, 
but were defeated, and the ruin of the country 
seemed complete when its King, Edmund, fell into 
the hands of the enemy and was mercilessly put 
to death. The Chronicle and Asser only say that 
"the Danes gained the victory, slew the King, 
and won the land." The legend which made 
Edmund an English St. Sebastian is of later 
growth. It tells how he was bound to a tree, 
scourged, shot at by the Danish bowmen until he 
was as thickly covered with arrows as a hedgehog 
with spines, and finally beheaded and cast into a 
wood, whence his body was miraculously recovered 
by his people. 

Over the remains of the martyr-king rose one 
of the most splendid abbeys of mediaeval England, 
and the royal manor of Bedricsworth, his burial- 
place, grew into the populous town of St. Edmund's 
Bury or Burg. Coins inscribed with his name 
were struck in his honour in East Anglia before the 
ninth century was at an end. The conqueror of his 
conquerors, he became the favourite saint of Guth- 
rum-Athelstan, the royal Danish convert of the 



8713 ^Ifredus Secundarius 113 

time of Alfred, and of Canute the Great, the first 
Danish King of all England, a hundred and fifty 
years later. His fame spread rapidly and widely, 
and he stands out as the central figure of the Christ- 
ian cycle of Danish legends, as Ragnar Lodbrok is 
the centre of the corresponding heathen cycle. 

But these things were still far away in 870, when 
the Danish leaders were regarded merely as savage 
marauders, with no romance or glamour about 
them, and King Edmund was but one among their 
many unfortunate victims. The events of 870 
were grim realities for Ethelred and Alfred of 
Wessex, and they must have waited with heavy 
hearts, knowing that the invasion of their own 
kingdom could not be long delayed. 

For the present, however, there was peace south 
of Thames, and Alfred might enjoy a brief interval 
of quiet home life before the full burden of public 
responsibility was laid upon him. He had been 
married in 868 to Ealhswith, a Mercian maiden 
of royal blood, of whom singularly little is known. 
Asser does not even mention her name, though 
he states that she was the daughter of Ethelred 
"Mucin," comes or ealdorman of the "Gaini," 
and of Eadburh, of the Mercian royal house. He 
adds that he had often seen Eadburh before her 
death, a much respected woman, who in her long 
widowhood was a pattern of virtuous life, but for 
Alfred's wife he has no word either of praise or 
blame. 

The name of Ealhswith occurs in the different 



114 Alfred the Truthteller [see- 

manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where 
her death is variously entered under the years 902 
and 905 ; in Alfred's will, where he bequeaths the 
"hams" at Lambourn, Wantage, and Ethandun, 
with a sum of money, to "Ealhswith"; and in a 
charter of 901, which she signs as the mother of 
Edward the Elder, Ealhswith, mater regis. She is 
also the reputed foundress, or co-foundress with 
her husband, of St. Mary's Abbey at Winchester, 
the "Nunnaminster" or nuns' minster, where she 
is said to have died in retirement. 

Her father's second name, " Mucill " or " Mucel," 
a word erroneously understood by early writers 
to mean "big" or "great," is found among the 
duces or ealdormen who witness Mercian charters 
from 814 to about 868. As another Mucel dux 
witnesses several of the same charters between 
836 and 848, Mr. Stevenson has concluded that 
there were two ealdormen of the name, father and 
son, and that the son was Alfred's father-in-law. 
Ealhswith further appears to have had a brother, 
Athulf or Ethel wulf, who was an ealdorman, and 
died, according to the Chronicle, in 903. All 
research has failed in identifying the district of 
the "Gaini," over which Ethelred "Mucill" is said 
by Asser to have ruled. ^ 

' There is, however, some evidence to show that it was in East 
Worcestershire, where King Wiglaf is found granting land to an 
ealdorman called Mucel Esning, probably the elder Mucel dux. — 
Stenton, The Early History of the Abbey of Abingdon, p. 26, note 
I. Cf. Stevenson, Asser, p. 227, note on c. 29, 5. There was 
also a Mucel, minister. 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 115 

It was during Alfred's protracted wedding fes- 
tivities, if Asser may be believed, in the midst 
of revels which were carried far into the night, 
that the young bridegroom was suddenly struck 
down by a strange and painful illness, hitherto 
unknown to the physicians, which still continued 
to torment him after twenty-five years, when 
Asser was writing his book. It was attributed by 
the spectators to "fascination," or the evil eye, 
or to the envy of the devil ; others, again, thought 
that it was a peculiar kind of fever, or the fi- 
cus from which he had suffered "from infancy." 
Regardless of consistency, Asser goes on to explain 
that this ficus had been sent as a discipline in 
answer to Alfred's prayers "in the flower of his 
youth"; that he afterwards prayed for a lighter 
affliction, which should not, like leprosy and 
blindness, render him useless or despicable, and 
that he was healed of the ficus, only to find a new 
infirmity substituted for it at his marriage. 

Alfred came of a short-lived stock, and he may 
well have inherited a constitutional delicacy which 
showed itself in various ways at different periods 
of his life, but it is impossible to determine the 
precise nature of his illness from Asser's vague 
and contradictory narrative. It has often been 
supposed that Alfred was an epileptic, but this is 
hard to credit of one who worked so hard and con- 
tinuously, and who was remarkable for the sanity 
of his mental outlook. Nor would epilepsy have 
been unfamiliar to the English physicians of the 




ii6 Alfred the Truthteller [866- 

time, or likely to be mistaken for the ficus. ' A 
more probable theory, based on the Anglo-Saxon 
medical use of the term ficus, would make the 
childish ailment hasmorrhoids, and the later 
trouble some form of stone. ^ This would explain 
many of the symptoms, as described by Asser; — 
the sudden attacks and equally sudden cessation 
of agonising pain, the constant irksome discomfort, 
the depression and lassitude of hours of compara- 
tive health, are all well-known symptoms of this 
complaint. It is even possible that Alfred's ner- 
vous dread of leprosy and blindness was induced 
by the subtle working of a disease which specially 
affects the circulation and eyesight. Yet what- 
ever his physical weakness may have been, he 
seems to have resisted it manfully. No bodily 
suffering could break his spirit, and he found the 
best corrective for morbid fancies in the pressing 
need for action, when at last the fatal hour struck 
for Wessex. 

St. Edmund won the crown of martyrdom on 
November 20th, 870. With the new year, the vik- 
ings advanced south-westward to the West-Saxon 
frontier, and encamped close to the royal "vill" 
of Reading, on the tongue of land between the 
south bank of the Thames and its tributary the 
Kennet. The Parker manuscript of the Chronicle 

' Cf . the accounts of the seizure of Charles the Fat in 873 and 
of the death of Charles of Provence, "long vexed by epileptic 
infirmity," in 863. — Ann. Bert. sub. ann. 

* Plummer, Life and Times, p. 214, Addenda. 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 117 

only states that "the army {here) came to Read- 
ing." The Peterborough manuscript says more 
explicitly that they "rode," perhaps along the 
ancient warpath of the Icknield Way. They 
poured into Wessex, writes Henry of Huntingdon, 
* ' like a stream , carrying all before it . " The leader 
of the host was no longer Ivar, who may now have 
gone to harry the west coast of Scotland with Olaf 
the White, but his brother Healfdene, with another 
King called Bagsecg, and a number of " jarls," or 
lesser chiefs. 

On December 31st, three days after their arrival 
at Reading, they sent out a foraging party under 
two of the jarls, while the remaining troops secured 
the camp by throwing a rampart across the neck 
of the little peninsula, from river to river. Asser, 
the sole authority for this entrenchment, calls it 
a vallum. It was probably a dyke, or earthwork, 
of the nature of the geweorc at Nottingham, or of 
Alfred's own later geweorc at Athelney. 

As the jarls and their horsemen rode westwards, 
through woods and fields, Ethelwulf, ealdorman 
of Berkshire, with an advance guard, recruited 
chiefly from his personal followers,^ met them 
at Englefield, between Pangbourne and Theale, 
completely defeated them, and slew one of their 
leaders. ' 

' Cum suis sodalibus. Stevenson, Asser, c. 35, p, 27. In the 
Anglo-Saxon glossaries sodalis is the equivalent of gesith. 

' Ethelwulf held an estate at Pangbourne, granted to him as 
ealdorman by Beorhtwulf the Mercian King in 844 (Birch, Cart. 



ii8 Alfred the Truthteller [866- 

The Danes fell back on their camp, and four 
days later, Ethelred and Alfred, at the head of the 
main West-Saxon army, effected a junction with 
Ethelwulf and appeared before Reading with a 
micel fyrd. They drove the bands of stragglers 
whom they found outside the camp up to the 
rampart, with great slaughter, but the Danes 
within the entrenchment rushed "like wolves" 
from "all the gates," and in their turn attacked 
the Christians, and put them to flight. Ethelwulf, 
the lion-like hero, was left dead on the field. His 
body, in the words of Ethelwerd, "was secretly 
carried off, and taken into the province of the 
Mercians, to the place which is called North- 
worthige [Northweorthig] but in the Danish tongue, 
Deoraby [Derby]." Perhaps, as Professor Stenton 
suggests,^ he was a Mercian by birth and early 
allegiance, and his people buried him in his own 
country. 

Gaimar, the Anglo-Norman poet-chronicler of 
the twelfth century, says that the English fled 
eastwards to Wistley Green, and escaped across 
the Loddon by the ford at Twyford; a curiously 
circumstantial account, but unsupported by any 
other evidence. It is more likely that the retreat 



Sax., ii., p. 20, No. 443). Hence Professor Stenton {op. cit., pp. 
26-7) argues, with great probability, that Berkshire was still 
under Mercia at that date, and that Ethelwulf was originally a 
Mercian ealdorman, who transferred his allegiance to Wessex. 

' Op. cit., p. 27. Pauli understands Ethelwerd to mean that the 
Danes carried Ethelwulf's body to Derby. 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 119 

would be to the west, where the royal demesne 
lands, from the "ham" at Wantage to the "ham" 
at Lambourn across the Downs, would furnish 
shelter and supplies, or to the south, to cover 
Winchester, which lies in a direct southerly line 
from Reading. 

The Danes seem now to have evolved a definite 
scheme of action, and to have organised their 
campaigns with a skill and method which de- 
manded equal activity on the part of their an- 
tagonists. At Nottingham and at Thetford, 
while they kept in touch with the waterways, 
they seized central points, and either threw up 
earthworks, or used older fortifications, whence 
they could harry the surrounding country. At 
Reading, where they were stationed on a river 
frontier, they worked rather from circumference 
to centre. They threatened both Winchester to 
the south and London to the east, held the line of 
Thames, and kept the way open for reinforcements 
from Scandinavia or the Continent to come to 
them. 

From Reading it would be easy to climb the 
Downs and march westwards into the heart of 
Wessex, along the Ridgeway, the old track which 
still crowns the heights, or to drop down by the 
ruined Silchester to the Roman road leading due 
south to Winchester. The victorious Danish 
army appears to have chosen the western route. 
Four days after the fight at Reading they were on 
Mscesdun, the modem Ashdown, the long range 



120 Alfred the Truthteller wee- 

of chalk hills which runs east and west between 
the valleys of the Ock and the Kennet. At 
some point on this ridge took place the third and 
greatest of the many struggles of what has been 
called "Alfred's year of battles."' 

Few sites have been more disputed than that 
of the battle of Ashdown. It has been located in 
Ashdown Forest in Sussex, at Ashdown in Essex, 
at Ashendon in Buckinghamshire, at Assedone, 
an eleventh-century manor near Ashampstead, 
between Pangbourne and Streatley, at Aston, near 
Lowbury Hill, at the eastern end of the Berkshire 
Downs, and at Ashdown Park, in the Manor of 
Ashbury, at their western end. 

The claims of Sussex, Essex, and Buckingham- 
shire are easily dismissed. The whole campaign 
centred in the Berkshire and Wiltshire hills, and 
it would require more than the recurrence of a not 
unusual place-name to justify its transference to 
the extreme south or east of England, or to Mercia. 
The identification of Assedone with ^scesdun seems 
to rest on a mistaken etymology. Aston, again, 
is the "East town," not the "Ash dune," and Ash- 
down Park only derives its name from its situa- 
tion on the Ashdown ridge. The whole range of 
downs, in fact, seems to have been called "Ash- 
down," not, probably, from the ash-trees which 
grew on the slopes, but from ^sc, some forgotten 
chieftain of bygone Saxon days. "Ashdown," 

' See the article by the Rev. W. H. Simcox, English Historical 
Review, vol. i., p. 218. 



8711 -^Ifredus Secundarius 121 

wrote Dr. Wise, the editor of Asser, in 1738, 
"seems to be a district or country rather than a 
Town," and he adds that the Downs were still 
called Ashdown by the shepherds. This is borne 
out by the entry in the Peterborough manuscript 
of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1006, which 
speaks of going "along Ashdown" to Cuckhamsley 
Hill, and by a passage in the Abingdon Chroni- 
cle which mentions Alfred's victory "on" (su- 
per) Ashdown. Dr. Wise himself thought that 
the battle-field was near Ashdown Park, below 
the earthwork of Uffington Castle, and tmder the 
White Horse, the figure cut in the chalk of the 
northern face of the Downs, which he took to be 
a memorial of the victory. In this theory, Uffing- 
ton Castle serves the Danes for a camp, while 
Ethelred, like an eighteenth-century general, lies 
the night before the engagement at Hardwell 
Camp, about half a mile to the west. Wayland's 
Smithy becomes the burial-place of the Danish 
King Bagsecg, and the jarls rest beneath the Seven 
Barrows. 

Though skeletons and Anglo-Saxon weapons 
have been dug up in the neighbourhood, there is 
really nothing except conjecture to fix the battle 
at this spot. Equally conjectural, if plausible 
enough, is the alternative theory which makes the 
Danes encamp on Lowbury Hill at the eastern end 
of the ridge, and the West-Saxons march up from 
Streatley to fight them on the Compton Downs. 
It seems, indeed, vain to hope to identify the 



122 Alfred the Truthteller [866- 

actual battle-field. The very fact that there is no 
genuine ancient tradition for its site suggests that 
it was soon forgotten. Camden, the sixteenth- 
century antiquary, who used Asser's book, and 
knew the Vale of White Horse, mentions Alfred's 
battles at Ockley and Ethandun in his descrip- 
tions of Surrey and Wiltshire, but says nothing of 
Ashdown, and other early scholars have followed 
his example. After all, it matters little. The 
whole district is memory-haunted. The green 
highway of the Downs has seen the passing of 
many peoples since prehistoric times, and the 
upland fight of Alfred and the Danes has become 
one with the imdying legends of the hills. 

If the scene of the drama must thus be left inde- 
terminate, the action, at least, is fairly clear, from 
the accounts given by Asser and the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle. Asser, in particular, who had gone 
over the field of battle and had talked to trust- 
worthy eye-witnesses, has preserved many intimate 
details. 

The Danes mounted the Downs from their base 
at Reading, whether merely for plunder, or in 
pursuance of a scheme of invasion, is uncertain. 
Their host was in two bodies or "folks," one under 
the kings Healfdene and Bagsecg, the other led 
by the "jarls" or lesser chieftains. The English 
made a similar disposition of their forces. Ethel- 
red commanded against the kings, and Alfred was 
at the head of the division which was opposed to 
the jarls. The advantage in position was with 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 123 

the heathen army, which occupied higher ground 
than the Christian forces. 

In the early morning ofJanuaix~§ih, the Danes 
began to descend the hill in close formation. Al- 
fred was ready for action, but Ethelred was at 
prayer and refused to move, "saying that he would 
not leave that place alive until the priest had 
finished the mass, nor desert divine for human 
service." Asser is of opinion that the subsequent 
victory showed that this piety availed much with 
the Lord, but Alfred may be excused for chafing 
at the delay. He was young and impetuous. The 
enemy was coming on fast. He, then, the secun- 
darius, took on himself the responsibility of the 
whole command. He gathered the troops in 
close array around the standards of Wessex, and 
led both divisions to the assault, charging uphill 
"like a wild boar." Ethelred, "girt about with 
arms and prayers," followed and the battle became 
general. 

There was in that place [writes Asser] a solitary 
stunted thorn-tree, which I have seen with my own 
eyes. About it the hostile forces joined with a great 
shouting, their men fighting for an evil cause, ours for 
life and loved ones and fatherland.^ 

All through the short winter day the battle 
raged, but as evening closed in, the broken Danish 

' The Manor of Assedone was in the Hundred of Nachededorne 
or Naked Thorn, a curious coincidence, but place-names derived 
from trees are not uncommon in Anglo-Saxon charters. 



124 Alfred the Truthteller [see- 

army fled in headlong rout towards their camp at 
Reading, pursued until nightfall by the triumphant 
West-Saxons. The level ridge of Ashdown was 
thickly strewn with the bodies of the dead. King 
Bagsecg fell on the field, slain, tradition said, by 
Ethelred's own hand, and with him fell the five 
great jarls, Sidroc the Old and Sidroc the Young, 
Osbearn and Fraena and Harold, amidst heaps of 
unnamed warriors. The stream of fugitives was 
still pouring into Reading on the following day. 
Never, it was said, since the coming of the Saxons 
to Britain had there been so great a slaughter. 

Later chroniclers, writing under strong royal 
and ecclesiastical influences, magnified the part 
played by Ethelred, and the effects of his piety. 
William of Malmesbury even says that the victory, 
imperilled by Alfred's rashness, was saved by the 
King's timely arrival. Alfred certainly acted with 
a courage and independence which throw an 
interesting light on the development of his char- 
acter at this time. The quiet student and devout 
penitent was now transformed into a hot-headed 
young soldier, impatient and self-confident, but 
full of generous ardour, courting danger and 
despising caution. The blood of his warlike 
forefathers must have stirred within him as he led 
that wild rush up the grassy slope in the pale 
light of the January morning, with all his future 
kingdom lying at his feet, the prize of victory. 

One of the legends of the White Horse connects 
it with St. George, who is said to have killed the 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 125 

Dragon at Dragon Hill, on the Ashdown range. 
In Alfred Wessex was to find her true dragon- 
slayer and champion in the long war with the 
many-headed Danish hydra, and it was on Ash- 
down that he must first have realised something 
of the meaning of that strenuous task. 

Great as the victory of Ashdown had been, it 
was not followed up by Ethelred and his brother. 
Healfdene was allowed to remain at Reading, 
recruiting his shattered strength, while the West- 
Saxon army apparently rested on its laurels. An 
Abingdon tradition may possibly give a clue to 
this seeming inaction. The Chronicle of the Ab- 
bey compares Alfred to Judas Iscariot, because 
he forcibly deprived the monastery of the "vill" 
of Abingdon, with all its appurtenances, a poor 
return to God for the victory over the Danes on 
Ashdown.^ It is possible that Alfred may now 
have been occupied in securing the upper reaches 
of the Thames by fortifications at Abingdon, 
which would hold the Danish camp at Reading in 
check, and would also be easy of access from the 
royal "hams" at Wantage and Lambourn, on 
either flank of the Berkshire Downs. The mon- 
astery had undoubtedly been plundered by the 

' It is the second text of the Abingdon Chronicle which com- 
pares Alfred to Judas. But the first text reproves him for the 
alienation of the vill. The monastery, which was very small, 
may have been on royal demesne. — Stenton, op. cit., pp. 30-31. 
Alfred sold Appleford, a later Abingdon vill, to his thegn Deor- 
mod. See his apparently genuine charter, Cart. Sax., ii., p. 223, 
No. 581. 



126 Alfred the Truthteller [866- 

Danes in 871. Only the walls were left standing, 
and the monks had fled with their relics and 
documents. 

If a policy of western defence were thus Alfred's 
aim, he must have been disappointed when, a 
fortnight after the battle of Ashdown, the Read- 
ing Danes, abandoning the western line of attack, 
made a bold dash southwards into Hampshire. 
The West-Saxon army can hardly have been dis- 
banded, for, led by Ethelred and Alfred in person, 
it caught up the enemy at Basing, on the Loddon, 
about twelve miles from Reading, on the direct 
road to Winchester. The battle which followed 
was claimed by the Danes as a victory, but prac- 
tically they owned themselves beaten, for they 
gave up their advance into Southern Wessex, and 
retreated empty-handed to their camp. The 
West-Saxons seem now to have fallen back on a 
new line of defence, the lofty downs south of the 
Kennet valley, which guarded Winchester, Salis- 
bury, and Wilton. 

It is probable that the next few weeks saw some 
of the many "uncounted raids " of ealdormen and of 
king's thegns and of "Alfred the King's brother," 
of which the Chronicle speaks, implying that, for 
Alfred at least, these skirmishing expeditions 
preceded his accession to the throne. In any case, 
with the coming of spring, the heathen army took 
the field in force, and another of the great battles 
of this eventful year was fought at Meretun, a place 
which has been identified with Merton, in Surrey, 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 127 

Merton near Reading, and Marden near Devizes, 
but which is, almost certainly, Marton near Bedwyn 
in Wiltshire, an important strategical post, on the 
Roman road from Winchester to Marlborough, 
commanding the approaches to Winchester and 
Salisbury, and not far from the point of junction 
of the three counties, Berkshire, Hampshire, and 
Wiltshire. 

Asser, oddly enough, omits this battle altogether, 
but the Chronicle briefly describes the division of 
the heathen host into two "folks," the flight, a 
feigned flight, possibly, of both bodies of the Danes, 
their rally and final victory, and the death of 
Heahmund, Bishop of Sherborne, with "many 
other good men." He was buried at Keynsham 
near Bristol, and the fact that he was afterwards 
honoiired as a saint incidentally serves to fix the 
day of the battle in which he was killed as that 
of his festival, March 22nd. 

About a month later, "after Easter," which 
fell this year on April 15th, King Ethelred also 
passed away, worn out by incessant labour and 
anxiety, or perhaps, as some of the later chroni- 
clers say, wounded to death in the battle of Marton. 
The sumor lida or "summer army" of Danish 
marauders of the Chronicle has even been turned 
into a fabulous Danish king "Somerled," who 
gives Ethelred the fatal stroke. He was laid to 
rest in Wimbome Minster, where a seventeenth- 
century inscription on a brass of earlier date pre- 
serves the memory of "St. Ethelred the Martyr, 



128 Alfred the Truthteller ceee- 

King of the West-Saxons, who fell by the hands of 
the heathen Danes." 

After ruling the kingdom for five years [writes 
Asser] with diligence, honour, and good repute, 
through much tribulation, he went the way of all 
flesh, and, buried in Wimborne Minster, he awaits 
the coming of the Lord and the first resurrection of 
the just. 

Alfred now came to the throne, "with the full 
consent of all the inhabitants of the kingdom," 
according to Asser, elected by the witan and ac- 
claimed by the whole people, if later writers may 
be trusted. There is no contemporary record of 
a formal election, for Asser' s vague generalities 
have little weight, and the Chronicle simply says, 
after the notice of Ethelred's death: "Then Alfred 
son of Ethelwiilf {Mthelwulfing) his brother took 
(Jeng to) the West-Saxon kingdom." 

In all probability Alfred's accession was a fore- 
gone conclusion. Though Ethelred left at least 
two sons, they must have been disqualified by 
their youth. It is even possible that the position 
of Alfred as secundarius carried with it some asso- 
ciation in the sovereign power and the recognition 
of a right to succeed to the crown. '^ To the believ- 
ers in Alfred's papal coronation and "anointing 
to king" his accession, of course, presents no 

' Plummer, Life and Times, pp. 89-91. Mr. Plummer com- 
pares the position of secundarius with the Celtic title tanist, 
which also means second. 



871] -/Elfredus Secundarius 129 

difficulties. It is also often assumed that Ethel- 
wulf had regulated the royal succession by his 
will, leaving the West-Saxon crown to Ethelbald, 
Ethelred, and Alfred, in turn, and giving Kent to 
Ethelbert and his descendants. This arrangement 
is supposed to have been subsequently set aside, 
as far as Ethelbert was concerned, while Ethelred 
and Alfred inherited the kingdom in accordance 
with its provisions. This theory rests on Asser's 
account of Ethel wulf's will, with the references 
to it in the Latin version of Alfred's will. It is 
probably due to a misconception of the meaning 
of the clauses cited by Alfred, which seem in the 
original Anglo-Saxon text to apply only to Ethel- 
wulf's private lands. 

Asser merely states that Ethelwulf by his will 
divided the kingdom "between his two elder sons," 
thereby, apparently, confirming the earlier settle- 
ment which had made Ethelbert under-king of 
Kent. The private estates were inherited, by a 
family agreement, by Ethelwulf s four sons in 
order, and it is possible that the same rule of 
descent was observed in the kingdom,^ but there 
is very little on which to base such a conclusion. 

In Alfred's case the question of title has been 
needlessly complicated. He was the obvious per- 
son to succeed on his elder brother's death, the 
one mature survivor of the royal house of Wessex. 
It is probable that, in conformity with the custom 

' Stubbs, Const. Hist., sixth ed., vol. {., p. 152, note 4; Plum- 
mer, Life and Times, p. 91. 



130 Alfred the Truthteller [866- 

of the time, he was solemnly crowned, though only 
a late and imtrustworthy tradition places his 
"second" coronation at Winchester, and connects 
it with the "first " coronation and unction at Rome. 
He brought the regalia used in the papal ceremony 
back to England with him, it was said, and be- 
queathed them to his successors. 

Among the ancient regalia which were melted 
down in the Civil War of the seventeenth century 
was "the principal crown with which the kings 
Alfred, Edward, etc., were crowned." Sir John 
Spelman describes it as "of a very ancient Work, 
with Flowers adorned with Stones of somewhat a 
plain Setting," and conjectures that Alfred, in his 
days of prosperity, "fell upon the Composing of 
an Imperial Crown ... of a more August and 
Imperial Form than has been formerly in Use in 
this Kingdom." This seems to have been "the 
crown of Edward the Confessor," ascribed to 
Alfred in the fourteenth century, when the monks 
of Westminster were attempting to prove that 
even if the "first king of all England" had not 
been crowned in the Abbey, they were in posses- 
sion of the very crown which the Pope had placed 
upon his childish head in Rome. 

Less mythical, if not altogether above suspicion, 
is "King Alfred's oath on the day of his corona- 
tion," preserved in the cartulary of his monastic 
foundation at Athelney. It agrees with the form 
of oath taken by the English kings of the eleventh 
century, the ancient threefold pledge to keep the 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 131 

Christian Church and people in peace, to put down 
wrong and robbery, and to do justice and mercy. 
In after years Alfred fulfilled that pledge in all 
sincerity, but in 871 the burden rather than the 
glory of kingship must have been present to him, 
and the care of Church and State must have lain 
heavily on his young shoulders, with the country 
ravaged and exhausted by war, and the Danes 
pouring into Wessex in overwhelming force. 

Shortly after the battle of Marton, "a great 
summer army," a sumor lida, of pirates — migra- 
tory adventurers, as opposed to the more per- 
manent winter settlers — sailed up the Thames, to 
reinforce the Reading army and share its triumphs. 
There may have been some fighting of which no 
distinct record has survived, but the main body 
of the Danes probably continued to hold North 
Wiltshire and the line of heights south of the 
Kennet. It was from here, presumably, that, 
about a month after Ethelred's death, they ad- 
vanced on the royal "vill" of Wilton, in the very 
heart of Wessex, much as, seven years later, they 
came down on that other Wiltshire "vill" of 
Chippenham. Now, as then, they seem to have 
taken Alfred unawares, with only a small band of 
followers, a lytel werod, about him. He made, 
however, a gallant stand on the hill above Wilton, 
south of the river Wiley. After fighting all day, 
the Danes took to flight; but when the Saxons 
pursued rashly, they rallied, turned upon them, 
and drove them from the field. 



132 Alfred the Truthteller laee- 

The Chronicle, in summing up the history of 
this eventful year, speaks of "nine folk-fights," 
or pitched battles, "^ without reckoning skirmishes 
and raids. Three unknown engagements must 
then be added to the six great fights of Englefield, 
Reading, Ashdown, Basing, Marton, and Wilton, 
and though the English might console themselves 
with the thought of the "thousands" of Danish 
dead, and of King Bagsecg and the nine "jarls" 
who slept among them, only two clear victories, 
Englefield and Ashdown, could be counted to 
them, while their own losses had been heavy, and 
they had been forced back almost to Winchester. 

It was no wonder, as Asser says, that the strength 
of the West-Saxons was reduced, or that Alfred 
was at last driven to make terms with the invaders, 
covenanting, apparently, that they should leave 
Wessex, but paying, doubtless, a heavy price for 
the inestimable boon of peace. Alfred must surely 
have had the "folk-fights" and "raids" of 871 in 
mind when he wrote in his translation of Orosius, 
departing widely from his original, how Philip 
of Macedon bethought him that he could not con- 
tinue to wage war against the Athenians "with 
folk-fights," and how he constantly "harried" 
them with raiding bands or hlothas, until they were 
all scattered and divided, and he was able to 



' Asser says eight, but this is probably a mere slip. The 
Chronicle has the Roman numeral viiii. (9), which might easily 
be mistaken for viii. (8). 



871] ^Ifredus Secundarius 133 

make an unexpected dash for Athens with his 
jyrd. ' 

The military operations of 871 may be compared 
with the somewhat similar campaign of 1006, in 
the same district, during the later Danish wars, 
when the here came after Martinmas to the Isle 
of Wight, and went up at midwinter through 
Hampshire and Berkshire to the Thames at Read- 
ing, whence their predecessors had started in 871, 
and so to Wallingford and Cholsey, and along 
Ashdown to Cuckhamsley, while the Jyrd gathered 
on the Kennet, only to be put to flight; the men 
of Winchester trembled at the passing of the plun- 
dering host, and the king and witan reluctantly 
bought peace with tribute. But in 1006 England 
had half-hearted defenders, under a "redeless" 
king, a leader without judgment or stability. In 
871, their hope was in a king, young indeed, as 
yet, and untried, but destined to prove, in the 
words of his kinsman, the chronicler Ethelwerd, 
"the immovable pillar of the West-Saxons." 

» Orosius (III., VII.), XIII., pp. 118-119. 



CHAPTER V 

ALFRED CYNING 

871-878 

AFTER the peace which followed the battle of 
Wilton, the Danes withdrew to Mercia, and 
for four years Wessex has no history, and the name 
of Alfred passes from the pages of the Chronicle, 
as the centre of interest shifts to the Midlands 
and the north. Only an occasional reference in 
later records, and a few charters of doubtful 
authenticity, bridge the gap between 871 and 875. 
Even Asser becomes a mere echo of the Chronicle, 
while the Prankish annalists are too busy with 
the affairs of Empire and their own struggle with 
the vikings to spare a thought for the distant 
West-Saxon kingdom. 

There is evidence, however, in Alfred's writings, 
that the people at his accession were all "broken" 
by the heathen folk, and that learning and civilisa- 
tion were at a low ebb. When Asser says that 
Alfred took the reins of government "somewhat 
reluctantly," he may well have been repeating 
what he had heard from the King himself. Alfred's 

134 



[871-878] Alfred Cyning 135 

preface to the Pastoral Care, by its insistence on 
the cares which beset him and the troubles which 
came upon his kingdom, suggests a not unnatural 
depression and sense of lonely responsibility in the 
young ruler, the last of the sons of Ethelwulf, left 
to face unaided a dark and stormy future. 

His first foes seem to have been those of his 
household. Difficulties which had arisen about 
the interpretation of his father's will were sub- 
mitted to the decision of the West-Saxon witan 
at Langandene, possibly Long Dean in Wiltshire, 
in a meeting which may probably be assigned to 
the beginning of the reign. It came about,writes 
Alfred in the preamble to his own will, 

that king Ethelred died. . . . Then, when we heard 
of many complaints concerning the inheritance, I 
brought the will of king Athulf (Ethelwulf) to our 
meeting (gemot) at Langandene, and it was read aloud 
before all the West-Saxon witan. When it had been 
read, I prayed them all, by the love they bore me, 
not to hesitate for love or fear of me to declare the 
folk-law, and I gave them my pledge, that I would 
never bear any of them a giudge for speaking accord- 
ing to law, lest any man should say that I had wronged 
my kin, whether old or young. 

It appears that Ethelwulf had left a joint 
life-interest in certain lands to his three sons, Ethel- 
bald, Ethelred, and Alfred, and that after Ethel- 
bald's death the two younger brothers made this 
over to Ethelbert. When Ethelbert died, Ethelred 



136 Alfred the Truthteller i87i- 

took the whole, with the witness of the witan, but 
he engaged that on his death these lands, with 
those which he had acquired independently, should 
revert to Alfred. In 871, then, Alfred found 
himself the sole legatee. "All my kinsmen had 
passed into the sleep of death," runs the Latin 
version of his will, "and so the inheritance of 
Ethelwulf my father devolved upon me." 

But another agreement had also been drawn 
up by Ethelred and Alfred in the days of the 
Danish invasion,' arranging that if either of them 
should be suddenly cut off, the survivor should 
provide for his brother's children from the family 
estates, other than those which Ethelwulf had 
thus specially bequeathed to his sons. It was, 
perhaps, in connection with this later settlement, 
that Alfred found himself called upon to face the 
discontent of his nephews or their guardians. 

Ethelred certainly left two sons, who are men- 
tioned in Alfred's will — ^thelwald, who afterwards 
put forward a claim to the crown, and ^thelhelm. 
A possible third son, Oswald, signs charters as 
filius regis up to 875. Of the other members of the 
royal house nothing is known. The witan, too, 
the advisers who gathered round the young King, 
are but indistinct and nameless figures. The 
older generation of notable prelates and ealdormen, 
Swithun and Ealhstan, Eanwulf and Osric, had 
passed away. Ethelwulf of Berkshire and Bishop 
Heahmund of Sherborne had fallen in the recent 
war. It is significant that neither Asser nor the 



878] Alfred Cyning 137 

Chronicle mentions any bishop or ealdorman by- 
name from the accession of Alfred in 871 to 886, 
eight years after the close of his first great struggle 
with the Danes. 

The signatures to charters in these years are 
mainly those of unremembered men. Ethelred, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, is an exception, but 
Kent at this time seems to have stood aloof in an 
isolation the more striking when compared with 
the leading part it had played in the former viking 
invasions. The personal details in the contem- 
porary authorities for the first half of Alfred's 
reign are singularly royal in character, records of 
the deeds of kings, Danish and English. 

It is likely enough that Alfred, in the early 
years of his rule, had to rely chiefly on his own 
judgment and administrative capacity in the work 
of government. But he was a bom organiser, 
and after the first effort he probably found much 
that was congenial to him in a life of public action. 
The leader of the charge at Ashdown, the rider of 
raids in the Berkshire valleys, was not one to 
shrink from danger or exertion. Nor had the 
country as yet suffered vitally from the Danish 
war. If Berkshire and Wiltshire were scarred 
by the passage of the marauding host, Winchester 
was unharmed, and the great monastic houses of 
the west, Malmesbury and Glastonbury, Sherborne 
and Wimbome, seem to have escaped desecration. 
There was plenty of reserve strength in the king- 
dom, but the treaty with the Danes had shown its 



138 Alfred the Truthteller [87i- 

immediate weakness and the exhaustion of the 
army, and there can be little doubt that Alfred 
set himself at once to discipline his weary troops, 
and to inspire them with fresh courage. 

The army which had defended Wessex in the 
"year of battles" was no mere slow-moving levy 
of ill-equipped peasant proprietors. Local con- 
tingents may indeed have been present at Ash- 
down, in the micel fyrd which Ethelred and Alfred 
took a week to bring into action at Reading. The 
Berkshire ceorls at least would probably turn out 
to protect their homesteads when the enemy was 
at the gates. But the brunt of the fighting seems ■ 
clearly to have been borne by the trained, well- 
armed horsemen who formed the military follow- 
ing of the great lords. Even while the fyrd was 
gathering at the opening of the campaign, ealdor- 
man EthelwuLf had met the Danish foragers at 
Englefield with his "comrades," his "gesiths" 
(sodales) says Asser, a small force, apparently, 
with which he afterwards joined the main body. 

The "raids" which the Chronicle contrasts 
with "folk-fights" were ridden by aristocratic 
leaders, ealdormen and king's thegns, and Alfred 
the King's brother himself, each, it seems, with 
his own band of "gesiths" or companions. The 
lytel werod with which Alfred took the field at 
Wilton may possibly have been largely composed 
of soldiers of this kind, men of the thegn class, 
with horses and swords, the ministri of the char- 
ters, the "men who follow me" of Alfred's will. 



878] Alfred Cyning 139 

At Basing, again, the rapid southward movement 
of Healfdene's troops was, perhaps, checked by 
Ethelred's mounted infantry, but at Marton the 
shire-levies of the three adjacent counties, Berk- 
shire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire, may have taken 
part in the battle. This, however, is all guess- 
work, for the Chronicle, in its long entry for 871, 
only once expressly mentions the fyrd in con- 
nection with the fighting at Reading. In every 
case it simply notes that "King Ethelred and his 
brother Alfred fought against the army Qiere),'' 
or, "against all the army." 

If the exact distribution of troops in any par- 
ticular action cannot be determined, it appears 
at least certain that the West-Saxon fyrd, no less 
than the Danish here, included a considerable 
body of mounted infantry at the beginning of 
Alfred's reign. But the here, a confederacy of 
companies of volunteer adventurers, organised for 
attack and conquest, was literally a "people in 
arms," while th.e Jyrd, mobilised for national de- 
fence, was a more loosely compacted force, fluc- 
tuating in composition, a shifting group of local 
militiamen, the farmers and villagers of the open 
countryside, with a permanent nucleus of "pro- 
fessional" soldiers, horsemen drawn from court 
and hall, from walled town or fortified camp.^ 

^ In King Alfred's translation of the Universal History of Orosius, 
which is peculiarly valuable for its correlation of Latin and 
Anglo-Saxon terms, he renders the Latin exercitus by fyrd and 
here indifferently, but he uses both jyrd and here as generic terms 



140 Alfred the Truthteller [87i- 

At the close of 871 the vikings, true to their 
compact with Alfred, left Reading, and went down 
the Thames to take up winter quarters in London, 
on Mercian territory. The vow to send alms to 
Rome and India, which in some manuscripts of 
the Chronicle Alfred is said to have made when 
he "sat" or encamped against the here in London, 
has been connected with this "wintering," but 
the passage is suspicious, and there is no other 
evidence to prove that the West-Saxons remained 
under arms through the winter following the "year 
of battles." 

A silver coin which bears the name of Ulfdene 
XRX {rex), and the monogram of London {Lon- 
donia), has also been attributed to this period. 
It shows Healfdene, the "barbarian" King, in a 
more favourable light than the monastic records 
of plunder and destruction, but to Mercia and 
Northumbria he must have come as a very scourge 
of God. Burhred, King of the Mercians, had ap- 
parently been occupied with a Welsh inroad on his 
western frontier during the West-Saxon troubles. 

and clearly distinguishes within them the three "arms," cavalry, 
infantry, and the navy. Thus he makes Alexander the Great 
gather a fyrd for the Persian war, composed of a foot here (fethe- 
here), a riding here (raedehere), and a fleet of i8o ships, while 
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, brings into the field an army of foot- 
soldiers, or gangehere, a "riding army," or raedehere, and a "ship 
army," or sciphere. There can be little doubt that these three 
kinds of service were also represented in the West-Saxon fyrd 
when Alfred became its commander. Orosius (III., VIII.) , XVI., 
pp. 124-5; (IV., I.), IV., I., pp. 154-5. 



8781 Alfred Cyning 141 

He now bought off the Danish army with so heavy 
a " Danegeld" that Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, 
was forced to lease church lands "on accoimt of 
the immense tribute to the barbarians in the year 
when the heathen sat in London." 

In thus paying blackmail to the invaders, both 
Alfred and Burhred seem to have imitated the 
weaker policy of the West Prankish kings towards 
the vikings, while they neglected their wise pre- 
caution of guarding the river-ways by systematic 
fortification. Still, if the details given by the 
later mediaeval writer "Ingulf" embody a gen- 
uine Croyland tradition, Burhred did what he 
could to save his kingdom, by granting out the 
devastated church lands of the fen country to 
military tenants, and thus interposing a barrier 
between the heart of Mercia and the Danes in East 
Anglia. If so, he only succeeded in postponing 
the death-struggle. 

In 872 the "Great Army" moved its winter 
quarters from London to Torksey on the Trent, 
a strong position in Lindsey, which now formed 
part of Northumbria. Thence, in spite of a 
second treaty of peace with Mercia, they worked 
up the Trent to Repton, the burying-place, accord- 
ing to "Ingulf," of the Mercian kings. Here 
they spent the winter of 873-874, harrying the 
land far and wide. Though there is no record of 
an organised resistance, it is hardly likely that the 
Mercians surrendered without striking a blow for 
freedom. 



142 Alfred the Truthteller [87i- 

Henry of Huntingdon is, perhaps, in the right, 
when he says that the three kings Guthrum, Os- 
cytel, and Anwynd now joined their fellows, and 
' ' they were made invincible. ' ' Burhred was driven 
from the country, and in his place the vikings set 
up a tributary king, one Ceolwulf, "an Englishman 
by race, but a barbarian in wickedness," who has 
had hard measure dealt out to him by later histo- 
rians. The Chronicle calls him an "unwise king's 
thegn"; to William of Malmesbury he is a "half- 
man" (semivir), to Sir John Spelman, "an Infam- 
ous Renegado of the Saxons." He seems to have 
been a mere tool of his Danish masters, and to 
have held the kingdom entirely at their will and 
pleasure, by a formal agreement, confirmed by 
oaths and the giving of hostages. He issued 
charters, however, and coined money in royal 
fashion, and "Ingulf" has a curious account of 
his oppressive methods of raising tribute, which 
may well be founded on fact when he describes 
the crushing tax laid upon Croyland Abbey, the 
penury and dispersion of the brethren, the melting 
down or sale of the sacred vessels, the silver and 
jewels of the monastery. 

The hand of the Dane was heavy on the English 
Church, and the pressure of taxation must have 
completed the ruin which the earlier raids had 
begun. The East-Anglian bishopric of Dunwich 
became extinct; at Elmham and Lindsey, and 
apparently also at Lichfield, the episcopal succes- 
sion was interrupted ; the Mercian see of Leicester 



878] Alfred Cyning 143 

was removed to Dorchester in Oxfordshire, to be 
near the West-Saxon border; only Worcester and 
Hereford remained imchanged. Burhred, the 
last independent King of Mercia, went over sea, 
to die not long afterwards at Rome in the odour 
of sanctity, and to be buried "in St. Mary's church, 
in the Englishmen's school." His wife, Ethels- 
with, Alfred's sister, survived till 888, when she, 
too, died in Italy, at Pavia, on her way to the Holy 
City. 

The army of invasion now turned seriously to 
the work of conquest and settlement. In the year 
875 it broke into two divisions ; Healfdene led one 
detachment into Northumbria, while the other, a 
mycel here, under the three kings Guthrum, Oscytel, 
and Anwynd or Amund, took up winter quarters 
at " Grantebridge," or Cambridge, the "vill" on 
the river Granta which afterwards became a 
famous Danish centre. Healfdene marched 
through Deira to the Tyne, and encamped at the 
mouth of the river Team, near Newcastle. Egbert, 
the under-king whom the Danes had set over 
Bemicia in 867, had been deposed to make way for 
a certain Ricsig, who may have been the leader 
of an anti- Danish movement, for his kingdom was 
recklessly harried by Healfdene' s troops. 

Churches and monasteries were burnt, monks 
and nuns were molested and slain, in a very frenzy 
of cruelty. The land was given up to fire and 
slaughter from the eastern to the western sea. 
The monks of Lindisfame fled from their island 



144 Alfred the Truthteller [87i- 

abbey. The abbot himself, with a band of faith- 
ful brethren, wandered homeless for years, bearing 
with him the "holy and uncorrupted body" of St. 
Cuthbert, the relics of St. Aidan and St. Oswald, 
and the precious volume of the Lindisfarne gospels, 
till at last they found a resting place at Chester- 
le-Street, the forerunner of the magnificent shrine 
at Durham. The Danes even carried their ravages 
into Strathclyde and the country of the Picts. 
The Ulster annals mention a great slaughter of 
the Picts by the Dubhgaill, the "Black Strangers" 
or Danes, in 874. Ricsig died, of a broken heart, 
it was said, and was succeeded by another ephem- 
eral king, Egbert II., who reigned for only two years. 

In 876, after the Pictish expedition, Healfdene 
seems to have fallen back from Bernicia to Deira, 
where he effected a permanent settlement. "He 
dealt out the land of the Northumbrians," says 
the Chronicle, "and they continued ploughing and 
tilling it." Simeon of Durham sums up the North- 
umbrian population in 878 as, "the army, and 
such of the natives as survived." The swords 
were beaten into ploughshares, the savage raiders 
were transformed into peaceful colonists, and the 
first great kingdom of the later Danelaw was 
established, with its centre at York, while the 
English maintained some shadowy authority, 
under Danish overlordship, in the Bemician 
country to the north of the Tees. 

While Healfdene thus drops out of history, fad- 
ing into obscurity amidst dim Christian traditions 



878] Alfred Cyning 145 

of violent death and divine vengeance, Wessex, 
the scene of his former defeats and triumphs, be- 
comes once more the theatre of war. The second 
great invasion, the attack of the army of the three 
kings on south-western England, began in 876. 
Unfortunately, the Chronicle, the only contem- 
porary English authority, is here so abrupt as to 
be almost incomprehensible. King Alfred, un- 
mentioned since 871, suddenly reappears in the 
summer of 875, faring out to sea with a fleet, a 
ship here, fighting against "seven shiploads" of 
vikings, taking one of their ships, and putting the 
rest to flight. 

As this account immediately follows the notice 
of the settlement of Guthrum's army at Cam- 
bridge, where it remained for a year, it might be 
supposed that the sea-fight took place off the east 
coast. Yet in the next entry both West-Saxons 
and Danes are found at Wareham, on the Dorset 
coast, a hundred and seventy miles or more dis- 
tant. "Here," runs the opening of the annal 
for 876, "the army {here) stole away from the 
West-Saxon /yr^^, into Wareham." 

The tenth-century chronicler Ethelwerd adds 
that it was the Cambridge army which thus 
moved south-westward, and joined forces with the 
"western army," which it had not done before. 
Unless this is a mere misunderstanding of the 
"West-Saxon /3'r(i" of the Chronicle,^ it implies 

^Earle, Two Sax. Chron., 1865, pp. lix., 304; Steenstrup, 
Normannerne, vol. ii., p. 69, note i. 



146 Alfred the Truthteller [87i- 

concerted action of a novel kind, between the 
Cambridge army and the "Black Strangers," or 
Danes of the Irish Sea.^ This is not unlikely, 
since they may, possibly, have also co-operated in 
the campaign of 878, and the Irish Danes were 
now directing their attacks against Wales and 
western England, leaving Ireland to enjoy a long 
interval of comparative peace. 

During the English wars of 870 and 871, the 
Irish and Prankish annals show a lessening of 
activity among the "Northmen" of the Continent 
and the "Strangers" of Ireland, while in 873 there 
was renewed harrying in the Loire country, and 
in Frisia, followed by treaties of peace similar to 
those which the West-Saxons and Mercians had 
made with Healfdene. The Cambridge army 
may have attracted the roving hordes of pirates 
who thus found their Prankish and Prisian hunting 
grounds to some extent closed to them, and Ware- 
ham would be no bad point of convergence for all 
the different bands of adventurers. 

But it is a far cry from Cambridge to Wareham : 
so far, that many historians have supposed that 
Guthrum's host took ship from the east coast, and 
sailed round to Dorset by sea. This is, however, 
to ignore the fact that they are said to have "stolen 
away" from the West-Saxon fyrd, for if they 
embarked in Mercia, there would be no need to 
evade a West-Saxon army of defence. Nor is 

' Oman, England before Norman Conq., p. 452. Major, Early 
Wars of Wessex, Bk. Ill, Chapter I. 



878] Alfred Cyning 147 

there any real difficulty in assuming that a lightly 
armed force, probably mounted, living on the 
country through which it passed, could cover the 
distance from Cambridge to Wareham, less than 
two hundred miles, quickly and easily. 

When once the Danes had "stolen away" from 
the West-Saxon fyrd, there would be no further 
obstacle to their advance on Wareham. "They 
rode (chevacherent),^' writes Gaimar, "straight to 
Wareham and besieged it. In a single day they 
took the town (Swrc)." The passage in the Chron- 
icle, then, may be understood to mean that the 
Cambridge army entered Wessex from Mercia, — 
by a night march, according to Asser, — slipped 
past the watching fyrd, and got clear away on the 
road to Wareham and the south, as Healfdene's 
men would have done in 871, had not the West- 
Saxons intercepted them at Basing. This inter- 
pretation agrees with the use in the Chronicle of 
the phrase, "the army (here) stole away from the 
fyrd," to describe the night-ride of the Danes from 
Wareham to Exeter, where the same manoeuvre 
seems to have been repeated. The viking fleet 
apparently joined the army at Wareham with 
additional troops and supplies, while the main 
body took the land-route. 

At Wareham the Danes would find a naturally 
strong position, further strengthened by art. 
Asser, who must have known the place well, as it 
lay in his diocese of Sherborne, calls it a castellum, 
a fortified town, or burh; to Gaimar, also, it was 



148 Alfred the Truthteller t87i- 

a hurc. The great square of earthworks, which 
still remains, is famous as one of the finest examples 
of a genuine "Saxon camp." It lies between the 
rivers Frome and Trent, which join below it, and 
fall into Poole harbour. Surrounded by water on 
all sides except the west, it was, as Asser says, 
"the safest of sites." Here Guthrum and the 
army of the three kings established themselves, 
and, if Ethelwerd may be believed, proceeded to 
ravage the surrounding country. The nunnery 
within the enclosure, of which Asser speaks, prob- 
ably fell a prey to the marauders, though there 
is no record of its fate. 

Alfred seems to have followed the invaders with 
the West-Saxon Jyrd, and to have come up with 
them at Wareham, for he now opened negotiations, 
and again made peace, "giving money," says 
Ethelwerd, and there is no reason to doubt his 
accuracy. The Danes swore solemnly to leave 
the West-Saxon kingdom, the usual condition of 
such a treaty, but enforced with unusual ceremony. 
Asser speaks of the giving of hostages, and of the 
swearing on Christian relics, "in which the King 
chiefly trusted, after God," while the Chronicle 
makes the vikings take their own "ring-oath," on 
the "holy ring" or armlet, sacred to the gods, the 
great oath which Odin himself is said to have 
taken — and broken — "which they had never 
sworn before to any people." These words find 
curious confirmation in the account of the treaty 
between Louis the German and the Northmen in 







1-^ , 

S ■*) 
J hi 

il 



ho 



i SO 



i -t3 



2 S 



878] Alfred Cyning 149 

873, when the vikings swore, not by the holy ring, 
but by their weapons, "in accordance with the 
rites of that people." 

The "ring-oath," then, created a peculiariy 
binding obligation, but all obligations sat lightly 
on the Danes. They left Dorset, only to take up 
winter quarters in south-western Wessex. "As 
was their wont, heeding neither hostages nor oath, 
nor the keeping of their pledged faith, the horsed 
here stole away from the fyrd by night into Exeter." 

A scribal error in the text of Asser's Life of 
Alfred, whereby occidit, "killed," has been sub- 
stituted for occidentem, "west," is responsible for 
the well-known story of the slaughter of Alfred's 
cavalry by the vikings, before their ride to Exeter. 
Apparently the Danish raedehere, or mounted 
infantry, once more found the West-Saxons off 
their guard, and made a bolt by night for Exe- 
ter, an ancient Roman city, where they fortified 
themselves. Alfred, whose trust in his relics 
had probably led him to relax his vigilance, 
tried to retrieve his error by riding after them 
with the fyrd, another indication that he had 
a considerable mounted force, but he failed to 
overtake them, and had to content himself with 
investing Exeter. 

Meanwhile the Danish fleet, or ship here, put out 
to sea, and coasted slowly along the Dorset 
shore, laden probably, as before, with supplies 
and reinforcements for the beleaguered garrison. 
The whole movement was much like the campaign 



150 Alfred the Truthteller I87i- 

of the previous season, on a smaller scale. It is 
now that some of the later chroniclers describe 
how Alfred built "long ships," manned them with 
"pirates," and blockaded Exeter by sea, while his 
army invested it on the landward side, and how 
the viking fleet of a hundred and fifty ships, full of 
armed soldiers, fought the King's vessels, and, 
weakened by a month of stormy weather at sea, 
was defeated, and foundered off Swanage from 
injuries received in the battle. This account ap- 
pears first in the thirteenth-century historical 
compilations of the monks of St. Alban's Abbey. 
It is not improbable in itself, but its source is un- 
known, and in every way the simple entry in the 
Chronicle is to be preferred: "The fleet (sciphere) 
sailed west about, and they met a great storm at 
sea, and a hundred and twenty ships perished at 
Swanage." 

It was doubtless in consequence of this naval 
disaster that the Danes at Exeter not only gave 
Alfred as many hostages as he wanted, and swore 
mighty oaths, but kept "good peace," and retired 
into Mercia at harvest-tide. This would be the 
late summer of 877, so the Exeter raid may be 
placed in the winter of 876, and the Swanage ship- 
wreck, perhaps, at the beginning of the following 
year. 

It is surely more than a mere coincidence that 
in September, 876, the Northmen reappeared in 
the Seine, just across the Channel from Wareham, 
with a fleet of about a hundred great ships called 



878] Alfred Cyning 151 

"barks" {bar gas). Though Alfred had shaken off 
his burden for the moment, he must have anxiously 
watched the enemy closing in on Wessex from 
every side. Over him, as over the king Damocles 
of whom he wrote in his Boethius, a naked sword 
hung by a fine thread. ^ 

Though the concentration of the viking forces 
on- England since 867 had meant a respite for the 
Continental kingdoms, the Empire was still torn 
by civil war, and devastated by the ceaseless 
internecine feuds of the Carolingian house. Save 
for the mention of a raid in the Loire valley in 
868, the Prankish annalists are silent concerning 
the doings of the Northmen between 866 and 873, 
but they only describe at greater length the rebel- 
lions of the imperial princes against their fathers, 
and the undignified quarrels of Charles the Bald 
and his brother Louis the German over the inherit- 
ance of their nephews, Lothair 11. , King of Italy, 
and the Emperor Louis II., the sons of Lothair I. 

Lothair of Italy died in 869. The year 870 
saw the partition of Lotharingia, the "middle 
kingdom," by the treaty of Mersen, and in 875, on 
the death of Louis II. without sons, Charles the 
Bald went down into Italy by the invitation of 
the Pope, John VIII., and received the imperial 
crown from his hands. In the weakness of the 
Empire, the Papacy had steadily gained strength. 
Nicholas I., who succeeded Benedict III. in 858, 
did much to raise the prestige of the Holy See. 

^ Boethius, XXIX., § i., pp. 65-6. 



152 Alfred the Truthteller [87i- 

Since Gregory the Great, it was said, no such Pope 
had been seen in Rome. "He ruled kings and 
tyrants, and dominated them by his authority, 
as if he had been the lord of the world." A states- 
man, with a lofty theory of the spiritual supremacy 
of the Papacy, he enforced the extreme claims of 
the Church with consistent boldness, during the 
nine years of his reign. His successor, Hadrian II. , 
carried on his work till 872, when John VIII., an 
able and practical man of affairs, mounted the 
papal throne. 

But neither statesmanship nor courage could 
avail to stem the tide of lawlessness in Italy, where 
the Roman nobles, the petty princes of the south- 
ern provinces, and the predatory Saracens of the 
Mediterranean combined to waste the land. John 
VIII. sent urgent and picturesque letters to the 
new Emperor, begging for help against his many 
foes. At first he pleaded to deaf ears. Louis the 
German had died in 876, and Charles the Bald 
was busy trying to wrest eastern Lotharingia from 
his brother's sons. It was not till the defeat of 
Andernach had dashed his hopes in this direction 
that he began again to think of his Italian respon- 
sibilities and ambitions. Meantime the vikings 
were in the Seine, negotiations with them had 
failed, and the troops which had been called out 
had done nothing. Charles "began to think 
about a ransom," and a winter's plundering, with 
the Pope's pressing appeals, served to translate 
the thought into action. 



878] Alfred Cyning 153 

At the beginning of May, 877, a tax of five 
thousand pounds of silver was raised to pay off 
the vikings, an "exaction to be paid to the North- 
men in the Seine, to induce them to leave the 
kingdom." It was a singular policy, to give 
tribute to the vikings, to set the Emperor free 
to help the Pope against the Saracens. While, 
moreover, it enabled Charles the Bald to go to 
Italy for the second time, it turned the fury of the 
Northmen upon England, for the vikings were 
true vagrants, and, like the modern slum popula- 
tion, were only driven from one refuge to betake 
themselves promptly to another. 

The great Seine fleet of about a hundred sail, 
which probably represented a force of from four 
thousand to six thousand men, may possibly 
have gone to join the English pirates, and to re- 
place the ships that lay sunk below the cliffs of 
Swanage. It was, apparently, a recollection of 
this Seine expedition which misled the early 
writers who antedate by twenty years the first 
invasion of Normandy by Rollo, its future duke, 
and place it in 876. 

The troubled year 877 closed with the sudden 
death of Charles the Bald, "in a miserable hovel," 
on his way back from Italy; an inglorious ending 
to his fifty-four years of ignoble struggle for wealth 
and position. "All the days of his life," writes a 
contemporary chronicler, "wherever it was neces- 
sary to resist his enemies, he would either openly 
turn his back or secretly run away with his sol- 



154 Alfred the Truth teller t87i- 

diers." He died at the beginning of October, some 
three months before the final desperate attempt 
of the vikings to win the kingdom of Wessex. 
The dark hour of the Empire coincided with the 
crisis of Alfred's fate. 

By the autumn of 877 the army of the three 
kings seems to have settled in Mercia, with its 
headquarters at Gloucester, and to have followed 
the example of Healfdene in Northumbria, by 
"dealing out" the land. Ceolwulf would now, 
doubtless, be required to fulfil the agreement he 
had made in 874, to resign his kingdom to his 
Danish masters whenever they should demand it. 
Though his power was restricted, however, he still 
remained under-king of western Mercia. "The 
army Qiere),'" says the Chronicle, "departed at 
harvest-tide into Mercia, and some of it they dealt 
out, and some they gave to Ceolwulf." 

This "deal" or partition of 877 may be the 
origin of the later distinction between Danish and 
English Mercia. The exact line of division is 
uncertain, but it probably corresponded more or 
less closely to the boundary fixed by Alfred in his 
treaty with Guthrum in 878. The land east of 
Watling Street, the valleys of the Trent, the Wel- 
land, the Nen, and the Bedfordshire Ouse, would 
thus fall to the Danes, while Ceolwulf would retain 
the valleys of the Severn and the Warwickshire 
Avon, the Cotswold country, and the modem 
Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Cheshire. 

The Danes set up no new kingdom in central 




A ST. EDMUND PENNY 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon 

Coins in the British Museum. Vol. I, 

Plate XVII 

Memorial Coinage of St. Edmund 

Struck in East Anglia 




HALFDEN'S OR HEALFDENE'S COIN 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon 

Coins in the British Museum. Vol. II, 

page xxxiv 




HEAD OF JOHANNES SCOTUS ERIGENA OVER THE DOOR 

OF HALL AT BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD 

From Wise's Asser, 1722 

Also figured in Sir John Spelman's Aelfredi Magni Vita, 1678, 

the Latin translation of The Life of Mfred the Great 



878] Alfred Cyning 155 

England, as they had done north of Humber. 
They appear to have formed a sort of confederacy, 
grouped round the "Five Boroughs," Lincoln and 
Stamford, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, and 
other military centres, but of the first beginnings 
and gradual development of their settlements 
nothing is known ; they only come into the light of 
history in the reign of Alfred's son, Edward the 
Elder. 

A considerable section of the Danish host, at 
least, found no permanent home in Mercia. Of 
the three kings who commanded the Cambridge 
army, Oscytel and Anwynd are not mentioned 
again by the contemporary authorities, but Guth- 
rum now stands out as the leader of a formidable 
combined attack on Wessex from the north and 
west. The viking fleet which in 878 was defeated 
in Devonshire was, perhaps, acting in connection 
with the force which, earlier in the year, seized 
Chippenham and overran Wessex.^ From 878 
to his death, as a Christian king, in 890, Guthrum's 
fortunes were closely interwoven with those of 
King Alfred, his great opponent. 

^ Of such co-operation there is, however, no proof. Cf . supra, 
p. 146; infra, Chapter VI., pp. 156, 165. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE TESTING OF ALFRED. THE WAR IN THE WEST 
AND THE WINNING OF LONDON. 

878-886 

THREE times in the course of seven years the 
Danes of the "Great Army" struck at the 
throne of Wessex. Once, in 871, from the east, 
an overland attack, from the Thames valley, with 
Reading as a base-camp; again, in 876 and 877, 
from the south, a combined land and sea campaign, 
starting from the fortified ports of Dorset and 
Devonshire; lastly, in 878, from the west, the 
land forces resting on Chippenham and the Bristol 
Avon as a base, and possibly co-operating with 
the fleet in the Irish Sea. 

This war in the west country, with its sudden 
vicissitudes of fortune, when the whole future of 
the West-Saxon kingdom hung in the balance, 
took hold of the popular imagination. Folk-tale 
and ecclesiastical legend grew up about it, and the 
dry narrative of the Chronicle has touches of 
eloquence in recording it. In reality, very little 
is known about those critical weeks in which the 
fate of Wessex was decided. Almost every detail 

156 



[878-886] The Testing of Alfred 157 

is questioned, the site of every battle is disputed, 
and the romantic additions are discredited. Yet 
still the story of Alfred in Athelney keeps its 
ancient charm, and still, as in the days of WiUiam 
of Malmesbury, the people point out the scenes 
of the great King's misfortunes. 

The royal "vill" or "ham" of Chippenham, the 
first point to be attacked by the Danes in 878, lies 
in Wiltshire, on the Bristol Avon, about halfway 
between its sharp southward bend at Malmesbury, 
and its equally abrupt turn to the west at Brad- 
ford. It must have been a place of some import- 
ance, as Alfred's sister was married there to Burhred 
of Mercia in 853, but it was apparently unfor- 
tified, as it does not occur in the early list of hurhs 
which includes Wareham, Exeter, and Malmesbury. 

It has been suggested that Alfred may have 
gone to Chippenham for the Christmas season, 
and that the Danes surprised him in his winter 
home. This is possible, but there is nothing to 
show that he was in North Wiltshire at the time 
of the inroad, and the Dorset Dorchester, which 
was a more usual place for the Christmas sojourn 
of the West-Saxon court, would also be more 
accessible from Devonshire after the siege of 
Exeter. For the same reason, though Asser 
seems to make the Danes go straight from Exeter 
to Chippenham, ignoring the settlement of Mercia, 
it is more probable that they made their dash into 
Wiltshire from the neighbouring Gloucestershire, 
as the Chronicle and Ethelwerd imply. 



158 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

It was at midwinter, in the January of 878, 
"after twelfth-night," that Guthrum's army, the 
here, stole into Chippenham. This attack during 
the Christmas festival is sometimes spoken of as 
an act of peculiar treachery, or at least of cunning, 
on the part of the Danes, but as a matter of fact, 
their raids appear to have been often made in the 
winter, sometimes with a view to taking up winter 
quarters. Thus Healfdene's march from East 
Anglia to the Thames was in December ; the battle 
of Ashdown was fought early in January, almost 
exactly seven years before the capture of Chippen- 
ham; and Exeter was also, in all probability, taken 
in the winter months. 

The special excellence of Guthrum's army lay 
in its power of swift and silent movement, rather 
than in any subtle strategy. Twice already it 
had "stolen away" from the West-Saxon fyrd, 
before it stole into Chippenham. But on both 
the previous occasions there had been a fyrd in 
the field for the Danish here to elude. Now, the 
men of V/essex, like the Mercians and Northum- 
brians before them, seem to have been struck with 
panic. The Danes, says the Chronicle, "raided 
(geridon) ^ the land of the West Saxons, and occu- 
pied it ; many of the folk they drove over sea, and 
the greater part of the others they ' raided ' (geridon) 
and subdued, except King Alfred, and he with a 
little band (lytle werede) went forth, uneasily, into 
the woods and the moor-fastnesses." Asser adds 

^ Geridan, to ride over, to "override." 



886] The Testing of Alfred 159 

that the Danish army wintered at Chippenham, 
that Alfred retreated to Somerset, and that 
he lived there on what he could get, by open or 
secret forays, from the heathen, and also from 
"the Christians who had submitted to the lordship 
of the heathen." 

It is, then, clear that the West-Saxon resistance 
to the vikings collapsed for some weeks at the 
beginning of 878. The suddenness of the attack, 
and the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, who 
"covered the land like locusts," are sufficient to 
account for this brief demoralisation, without 
attributing any particular disloyalty or cowardice 
to Alfred and his people. 

Three facts stand out from the authentic nar- 
ratives: a West-Saxon migration from England, 
the reduction of a large part of Wessex by the 
Danes, and the stand made by the King and his 
immediate followers behind the forest-screen of 
Selwood and the marshes of Somerset. It was 
reserved for later ages to explain these events 
by baseless theories of Alfred's early arrogance 
and tyranny, of a revolt of his subjects against 
his oppressive government, or of civil dissensions 
between the West-Saxons and the Celtic popula- 
tions whom they had conquered. * 

The West-Saxon fugitives fled, according to 
Ethelwerd, across the English Channel to "Gaul," 

' Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxon Kings, trans., ii., p. 52; Pauli, 
Life of Alfred, trans., pp. 1 61-162. Cf. Legend of Alfred and St. 
Neot, infra. Chapter XII. 



i6o Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

that Prankish country which had just bought 
peace from the vikings of the Seine. They seem 
to have come mainly from Hampshire, for in the 
following spring only those Hampshire men who 
had not "sailed beyond sea for fear of the heathen " 
joined Alfred at "Egbert's Stone." Many of 
them, doubtless, would be clergy ; later chroniclers 
turned them into bishops, followed by their 
flocks, carrying with them the relics of the saints 
and the treasures of their churches. Whether 
this be literally true or no, such sad little proces- 
sions of monks and priests, flying before the storm 
of viking persecution, must have been a familiar 
sight in the last quarter of the ninth century. 

The guardians of St. Cuthbert's body were still 
wandering over northern England with their 
sacred burden in 878, and it was at this time also 
that the shrine and precious things of St. Columba 
were removed from lona to Ireland, to protect 
them from the "Strangers." It is, perhaps, more 
than an interesting coincidence that Dado, who 
was Bishop of Verdun from 880 to 923, is said to 
have hospitably welcomed certain learned Britons, 
refugees from their island home, "where all the 
inhabitants had been either killed or put to flight." ^ 

The remaining West-Saxons, who submitted 
to the Danes, have been accused of treachery and 
servility for bowing their necks to the foreign yoke, 
but they appear to have had little choice in the 
matter. Experience had shown that the only 

» Vita Johannis Gorziensis, Pertz, SS., iv., p. 343. 



8861 The Testing of Alfred i6i 

two ways of stopping a viking invasion were 
heavy tribute or a decisive victory, and time was 
needed both to collect money and to organise an 
effective army. 

Three months later the King was ready for 
action, but for the moment he was powerless, 
and the people had to make the best terms they 
could. Alfred's writings show that there was 
harrying and burning south of Thames, as well 
as scattering of books and treasure, and exile of 
learned men. Though there is no definite record of 
the sacking of any of the great religious houses 
of the south and west, the succession of the abbots 
of Malmesbury and of Glastonbury becomes 
uncertain from the middle of the ninth century, 
and there may be a good deal of truth in Gaimar's 
account of the destruction of monasteries and 
churches. 

From Chippenham the way was open to South 
Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset, but Devon- 
shire and at least part of Somerset seem to have 
rallied round their ealdormen, and to have sup- 
ported the King when, an earlier Here ward, he 
withdrew to his camp of refuge in the western fens. 
The legendary Alfred skulks by highways and 
hedges, through woods and fields, to be scolded 
by peasants and comforted by saints in an exile 
which lasts for three years. The historic Alfred 
passed some four months in consolidating his 
forces for a final crushing blow at the main body 
of the Danes, while he held the west country 



1 62 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

against Guthrum's outposts, and carried on a 
skirmishing warfare from his stronghold in the 
Somerset ' ' moor-fastnesses. ' ' 

Between the Quantocks and the Polden Hills 
stretches a wide tract of marshland, where wooded 
knolls of higher ground rise like islands from the 
watery plain. Straight rows of grey-green willows 
now mark the course of the "rhines" or dykes, 
and cattle graze on the reclaimed water-meadows 
which in Alfred's day were all waste swamp and 
fen. Yet it is a wild country still, lonely and beau- 
tiful, with the level lines of its grassy fiats, its 
shining reaches of mere and stream, and its clear 
pale tints of rush and sedge, withy-bed and alder 
thicket. It is a historic country, too, rich in 
seventeenth-century memories of Sedgemoor and 
"King Monmouth," and looking northward to- 
wards a land of old romance, Glastonbury, and 
King Arthur's "island valley of Avilion." Here, 
in the middle of the seventh century, the Britons 
took refuge, when they "melted like snow" before 
Cenwalh, King of Wessex. Here, in 845, the eal- 
dormen of Somerset and Dorset defeated the 
Danes at the mouth of the river Parret. But it 
is King Alfred's name which is most closely asso- 
ciated with the district where he toiled and suffered 
till the day when he returned to his people as one 
risen from the dead. 

For about ten weeks, from the early January to 
the late March of 878, he sheltered in the fens, 
guarding the "gate into Devonshire," the Taunton 




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886] The Testing of Alfred 163 

gap between the Quantocks and the Blackdown 
Hills. It was, no doubt, as Asser says, an unquiet 
life, full of privations and dangers, but Alfred was 
not in reality the forsaken outcast of popular 
tradition. There were royal estates at hand, 
such as Lyng, Somerton, and Langport, owing 
dues to the King, and all loyal Devon was behind 
him. His hardships were shared, too, by the 
lytel werod, the little company which had followed 
him into Somerset, a band of picked men to 
whom Asser gives the Prankish name of "vassals" 
(Jaselli). There were, apparently, a few great 
nobles among them — Ethelwerd definitely men- 
tions Ethelnoth, ealdorman of Somerset — but 
they were chiefly thegns and king's retainers 
and personal followers, those, says Ethelwerd, 
who were maintained by the King's pastus, or 
"farm," the food-rents which were specially ap- 
propriated to the upkeep of his household and 
his dogs and horses. In the eleventh century a 
particular garden in Langport had still to render 
fifty eels a year to the king's farm, and the Som- 
erset manors of Cheddar and Somerton were 
joined in a common obligation to provide a yearly 
"farm of one night" or to feed the court for one 
day a year. 

Alfred, then, was neither solitary nor destitute 
in his weeks of waiting, but the tales which give 
him his mother — dead years before — for a com- 
panion, or bring his wife and children to the camp, 
are pure invention, though it is, of course, prob- 



1 64 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

able that the women of the royal family had been 
placed in safety in the west country, out of reach 
of the vikings. 

In happier days, writes William of Malmesbury, 
Alfred himself would relate his adventures, in 
merry mood, to his friends. Many of the legends 
of the great King belong, indeed, to this period. 
They are to be found in the lives of St. Neot and 
St. Cuthbert, and in the pleasant discursive pages 
of William of Malmesbury, — the famous story of 
Alfred and the cakes, the story of Alfred's visit to 
the Danish camp in the disguise of a minstrel, the 
appearances of St. Neot and St. Cuthbert, and 
the miraculous draught of fishes from the frozen 
river, — some of them, perhaps, genuine local 
traditions, others floating folk-tales, others, again, 
the product of a pious fancy, but all of them show- 
ing the abiding human interest of the Athelney 
episode. ' 

Legend does not distinguish the six weeks* 
stand at Athelney from the ten weeks' wandering 
in the marshes, but history marks more clearly 
the succession of events. The Chronicle and 
Asser agree in putting the wandering in the marshes 
first, then, the defeat of the Danish fleet in Devon- 
shire, and lastly, the building of the fort on the 
isle of Athelney, and the six weeks* skirmishing 
which preceded the battle of Ethandun. 

While the army of the three kings had been 
concentrating its efforts on south-western England, 

* For these legends in detail see infra, Chapter XII, 



886] The Testing of Alfred 165 

another viking force, under "the brother of In- 
waer and Healfdene," presumably Ubba,* was 
engaged in harrying the coast of Wales. The 
Welsh King, Roderick Mawr, son of Mervyn, after 
defeating the Danes in two battles, was forced to 
fly to Ireland, and Ubba wintered in South Wales, 
and ravaged the country with great cruelty, spar- 
ing neither convents, women, nor children. 

Early in 878 he appeared off the north-western 
coast of Devonshire with twenty-three ships, act- 
ing it may be in concert with Guthrum, who 
was now master of southern Wessex and pressing 
hard on Somerset. A band of English king's 
thegns {minis tri regis), with their men, had en- 
trenched themselves at a place called "Cynwit," 
in a rude fort which could only be approached from 
the east. Here the Danes besieged them, but the 
garrison, lacking water, made a bold sally, led 
apparently by Odda, the ealdorman of Devonshire, 
and cut the viking army to pieces. Ubba himself 
fell, and with him from eight hundred to twelve 
hundred of his host. Only a small remnant 
reached their ships in safety, and escaped. 

Such is the outline of the story as told by Asser, 
who had seen the fort at "Cynwit," and, as a 
Welshman,^ and Bishop of the western diocese of 
Sherborne, may have had access to special sources 
of information. The Parker Chronicle simply 
states that in the same winter the brother of In- 

^ Gaimar calls him Ubbe. 

* He may even have been in South Wales in 878. 



166 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

waer and Healf dene was in Wessex, in Devonshire, 
with twenty-three ships, and there was slain, and 
eight hundred and forty men of his army with him. 
Ethelwerd suppHes Odda's name, and Gaimar 
says that Ubba was slain in "Pene wood," and 
buried under a great "how" Qioge) or mound in 
Devonshire, which was called Uhbelawe. Most of 
the later manuscripts of the Chronicle add the 
picturesque detail of the capture of the Danes* 
"Raven" standard, a banner which, according 
to the Annals of St. Neots, had been woven by 
the three sisters of Ragnar Lodbrok in a single 
morning, so skilfully, that in time of war, if the 
vikings were marching to victory, the raven on 
the flag appeared with outstretched wings, in full 
flight, while when defeat was impending, it hung 
drooping and motionless. The raven was the 
messenger of Odin, the raven-god, and when the 
great war-banner was taken, the English might 
well feel that Alfred's Christian soldiers had 
avenged the blood of the blessed king and martyr 
Edmund. ' 

Some of the twelfth-century historians make 
Ivar and Healfdene fall in the battle of Cynwit, 
no doubt from a misunderstanding of the Chron- 
icle's description of the Danish leader as "Inwaer's 
brother and Healf dene's. ' ' But if, as a seventeenth- 
century writer says, the battle has as many sites 
in Devonshire as Homer has birthplaces in Greece, 
the sad stories of the deaths of these Danish kings, 

^ Cf. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, R. S., vol. i., p. 410. 



886] The Testing of Alfred 167 

the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok, would fill many 
volumes. Ivar, Inwaer, or Hingvar, whom the 
later authorities turn into two distinct persons, 
is killed by the Northumbrians, or falls at Cyn- 
wit; or, again, he dies in 870, immediately 
after the murder of St. Edmund, or in 872, in 
Ireland. Healfdene may be the "Alband, king 
of the Black Strangers," who was slain in 877 in 
a battle with the Irish Norsemen at Strangford 
Lough; but in English tradition, he is afflicted by 
heaven-sent madness, and, driven out by his 
Northumbrian army, he sails from the Tyne with 
three ships, to meet his death at sea. 

The commonly accepted identification of "Cyn- 
wit" with "Kenwith Castle" or "Hennaburgh" 
near Bideford in North Devon is, apparently, a 
figment of the antiquarian imagination.^ There 
is nothing beyond the statements in the Chronicle 
and Asser that the fight took place "in Devon- 
shire," to fix its site, or the burial-place of Ubba. 
Yet, though deprived of its local habitation and 
its legendary associations, the battle of Cynwit 
remains a most important victory for the West- 
Saxons, as important in its relation to the later 
battle of Ethandun as the Swanage shipwreck 
had been in its effect on the siege of Exeter. The 
Christian army was no longer caught between two 
heathen forces. Relieved of the danger in his 
rear, Alfred was free to concentrate his whole 
strength on Guthrum's host, and it was, perhaps, 

'Stevenson, Asser, p. 262, note on c. 54, 6. 



1 68 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

a direct result of the Cynwit victory that in the 
last week of the March of 878 he took up an 
actively aggressive attitude. 

It was at Easter-tide that King Alfred with his 
little band {lytle werede) wrought a "work" 
(geweorc) or fort at Athelney {^thelingeigge) , and 
from this fort strove without ceasing against the 
army (here) with the help of those men of Somerset 
who were near at hand. In the twelfth century 
William of Malmesbury described Athelney as 
"not an island of the sea, but so inaccessible 
from flooded swamps and marshes that it can only 
be approached by boat." All overgrown with 
alder, it was full of game, stags and goats and 
other wild animals. The stags and goats have 
given place to the pigs and sheep of Athelney farm, 
but even now the description is faithful enough 
in the winter season, when, in spite of dykes and 
drainage, the country is almost submerged by 
floods, and Athelney is reached from East Lyng 
by a causeway raised above the level of the swampy 
fields. The tidal river Parret, turbid and sluggish, 
crawls westwards past muddy banks to Borough- 
bridge, where it is joined by the silvery waters of 
the Tone, which flows northwards from Taunton. 
Between the two streams, on the left bank of the 
Tone, about halfway from Taunton to Bridge- 
water, lies the isle of Athelney, a low rise crested 
with trees, not the highest ground in the neigh- 
bourhood, but well suited for a camp, communi- 
cating easily with Lyng in one direction, and with 



886] The Testing of Alfred 169 

Langport and Somerton in the other, and keeping 
watch over the river- way to Taunton to the south. 
The Parret and the Tone are now artificially em- 
banked, much of the surrounding land has been 
brought under cultivation, and both the old coach- 
road and the Great Western Railway pass within 
sight of Athelney. But still, when the evening 
mists have blotted out the modern features of the 
view, the rushing train, and the red, slate-roofed 
houses, fancy may restore the scene on which 
Alfred's eyes rested — the vast expanse of fen 
glowing like fire under the winter sunset, or gleam- 
ing white in the cold light of the moon — the little 
hills, uncrowned as yet by their stately church 
towers, swimming in a sea of mist. 

It may be that the break-up of the winter frosts 
had rendered the marshes uninhabitable by the 
Easter of 878, and that Alfred was compelled to 
retreat to higher groimd, or the building of the 
"work" on the isle of Athelney may have been 
due to purely military reasons, the first move in 
the offensive campaign against Guthrum's army. 

. Of the fort, as of the monastery which succeeded 
it, no vestiges remain, though a Georgian monu- 
ment in the field above Athelney farmhouse com- 
memorates the King's sojourn in the island.^ 
About a mile and a half to the north-east, at 
Boroughbridge, just beyond the junction of Tone 

' For the inscription on it cf. infra, Appendix. Major, op. cit., 
pp. 154-5, mentions an ancient causeway from Athelney to 
Boroughbridge. 



170 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

and Parret, is a higher, steeper outcrop of rock, 
now called Borough Mump, or King Alfred's Fort, 
a natural fortification, on which may still be 
traced a triple line of terraces, partly, perhaps, 
due to artificial formation. This grass-grown 
mound, now, with its deserted church tower, a 
striking landmark in the wide plain, is often taken 
for the very "work " which King Alfred "wrought" 
in 878, and though it is too far from Athelney for 
this to be probable, it may quite possibly have 
been used by Alfred in his guerilla war with the 
Danes. 

The words of the Chronicle: "King Alfred . . . 
was fighting against the army {here) from the 
fort {weorc) " show that he was in touch with the 
enemy during the Athelney period, and though no 
authentic details of the events of those weeks 
have been preserved, it is likely that there were 
many petty engagements and skirmishes, "raids" 
ridden by ealdormen and king's thegns, and by 
the King himself, as in the spring of 871, when the 
West-Saxon and Danish forces faced each other 
in the Thames valley. 

Easter Day fell early in 878, on March 23d, 
and it was in the seventh week after Easter, about 
Whitsimtide, in the second week of May, that 
Alfred made the next move in his plan of cam- 
paign. "He rode to Egbert's Stone {Ecgbryhtes- 
stane) on the east of Selwood, and there came to 
him all the men of Somerset and of Wiltshire, 
and those of the Hampshire men who were on this 




S < 

PL, LU 

J £ 



8861 The Testing of Alfred 171 

side the sea, and they were fain {glad) of him." 
They welcomed him, says Asser, "as one restored 
to life after many tribulations." From Egbert's 
Stone the King marched with the army of the 
three shires to Iglea, where he encamped for a 
night, and thence, in the course of another day, 
to Ethandune, where a great battle was fought with 
the main body of the Danes. 

The difficulty of locating Ecgbryhtesstane, Iglea^ 
and Ethandune has led to wide divergences of 
opinion as to the line of march taken by the West- 
Saxon army and the site of the final battle. Ed- 
dington and Yattenden in Berkshire, Yatton 
Keynell, Heddington, and Edington in Wilt- 
shire and the Somerset Edington, on the Polden 
Hills, have all been suggested as the Ethandune'^ 
of the Chronicle, while corresponding sites have 
been found for Iglea and Ecgbryhtesstane. In a 
case of this kind — the location of a battlefield 
without direct historical evidence — "tradition" 
is a dangerous guide, and the only tests which can 
be applied are philological and strategic. The 
argument from strategy yields at best a probabil- 
ity; the argument from philology may at least 
prove the continuity of a place-name, and eliminate 
the fantastic identifications of unscientific anti- 
quarianism. Tried by this test, the Wiltshire 
Edington alone gives satisfactory results. ^ 

Alfred, then, may be supposed to have ridden 

* The dative form of Ethandun. 

* For a discussion of this subject cf. infra, p. 197. 



172 Alfred the Truthteller t878- 

forth from Athelney as a king coming to his own 
again, mounted and equipped for war, at the head 
of his bodyguard of thegns, with the men of 
Somerset gathering behind him, and the men of 
Wiltshire and Hampshire pouring in from east 
and south to the appointed place of meeting 
at "Egbert's Stone," a boundary-stone, probably, 
at the point where the three shires met, on the 
east of the great forest of Selwood. 

Though Sir John Spelman's identification of 
Brixton Deverill in South Wiltshire with Ecg- 
hryhtesstane is apparently based on an erroneous 
derivation, it seems likely that the West-Saxon 
forces met in that neighbourhood, perhaps, as Mr. 
Stevenson suggests, ^ near Penselwood, at the spot 
where old maps mark a "Bound Stone " at the junc- 
tion of Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire. Pensel- 
wood is about eighteen miles from the Wiltshire 
Edington, and an easy day's march would bring 
Alfred's army to Southleigh wood in Warminster 
parish, where in former days there was a boimdary 
tree called Iley Oak, which may represent the 
Iglea of the Chronicle, where Alfred encamped the 
second night, some seven miles from Edington. 
"Thence, on the following morning, moving his 
standards with the dawn," writes Asser, "he came 
to the place which is called Ethandun." 

From Warminster, which in the eleventh cen- 
tury was a royal hurh, a road now curves round a 
bold shoulder of down, and nms through four miles 

^ Asser, p. 269. 



8861 The Testing of Alfred 173 

of hilly country to Westbury, also on the later 
royal demesne, and so north by the undulating 
valley of the Bristol Avon, to the king's "hams" 
of Melksham and Chippenham, a distance of 
between fifteen and sixteen miles. At Westbury, 
the Market Lavington road branches off to the 
east, skirting the downs, which here drop abruptly 
to the low-lying village and fine old church of 
Edington. The West-Saxons may have followed 
this route, or they may have climbed the downs 
above Warminster, and struck straight across their 
rolling slopes to Edington Hill, repeating, to some 
extent, the operations of the Ashdown campaign. 

Difficult as this ground would be for marching, 
it was, perhaps, in those days, easier than the 
thickly wooded and swampy lowlands, traversed 
by narrow miry roads. There, was, at least, room 
for the troops to expand, and to advance in open 
order. The rounded spurs of the downs, where 
they fall away to the valleys on the north and west, 
are crested with camps and earthworks. Be- 
neath one such entrenchment, Bratton Castle, 
about a mile to the westward of Edington, is the 
white horse cut on the chalky hillside which is 
locally supposed to commemorate Alfred's victory 
over the Danes. 

Guthrum may have seized this point of vantage, 
commanding the road to Chippenham and the 
royal lands at Ethandim, or his troops may have 
been stationed more to the eastward, on Eding- 
ton hill itself. But this is pure hypothesis. The 



174 Alfred the Truth teller t878- 

Chronicle dismisses this famous fight, undoubt- 
edly one of the decisive battles of English history, 
in a couple of sentences, and Asser, though he 
adds a few details, says nothing of the relative 
positions of the opposing forces, or the tactics of 
the two great leaders. 

Of the numbers and constitution of the armies 
which now faced each other on English soil it is 
equally difficult to form an idea. The original 
here of the three kings must have been much re- 
duced by the heavy loss in the Swanage shipwreck, 
but it had probably since received consideia- 
ble reinforcements from the Continent. On the 
other hand, it does not follow that the entire 
host had left Mercia with Guthrum, or even that 
all the invaders of Wessex were with him in Wilt- 
shire, though the Chronicle's use of the phrase 
"all the here'^ seems to imply that the Danish 
King had done what he could to concentrate his 
troops. Warned, perhaps, by the rally of the 
men of Hampshire and Wiltshire to Alfred's 
standard, he may have called in the outposts 
which had been harrying Somersetshire, and have 
prepared for a crushing blow at the West-Saxons 
before they could get past him to his base at 
Chippenham. 

Alfred, too, had all the available men from the 
three shires of Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire. 
Gaimar adds the men of Dorset,"^ but they, with 
the men of Devon and Berkshire, may well have 

^ He also gives the names of some of the "barons," v. 3168. 



8861 The Testing of Alfred 175 

been exhausted by their previous efforts, or unable 
to leave the defence of the south-western coast 
and of the Thames. 

The document called the "Burghal Hidage,"^ 
which apparently shows fairly accurately the 
military strength of the West-Saxon kingdom at 
the beginning of the tenth century, gives Wessex, 
exclusive of Kent, but inclusive of Surrey and 
Sussex, about twenty-two thousand five hundred 
hides, or, at the rate of one man for five hides, a 
well-equipped field army of about five thousand 
men. Alfred's force from the three shires, at this 
same rate, would be about two thousand seven 
hundred or three thousand men, or about three 
thousand five hundred including Dorset. Adding 
something for the popular element, which was 
probably present in some strength in the Ethan- 
dun Jyrd, this makes a respectable army for days 
of scanty population and hand-to-hand warfare. 
Some of the best modem authorities only allow 
William the Conqueror six or seven thousand men 
at the battle of Hastings, nearly two hundred 
years later. 

Of the proportion of footmen to mounted in- 
fantry on either side, also, nothing is known, 
though the English pursued the defeated enemy 
on horseback. "They fought against all the here^ 
and put them to flight, and rode after them to the 
fort (geweorc), and sat there fourteen nights," 
says the Chronicle. Asser further notes that the 

' Infra^ Chapter VII., p. 241. 



176 Alfred the Truth teller t878- 

English fought in a solid mass {cum densa testi- 
tudme), not, as at Ashdown, in two divisions, 
that they fought "bravely and long," and that 
they followed the flying Danes to the fort (arx), 
and slew all the men they found without the gates, 
and carried off the horses and cattle. Simeon 
of Durham elaborates without improving. He 
makes the King and the flower of his people rise 
with the limpid dawn, and arm themselves with 
the triple breastplate of faith, hope, and charity: 
the king's face shines with angelic brightness : the 
shouts of the combatants and the clash of weapons 
are heard afar: God looks down from heaven and 
awards the victory. 

Many historians, from the days of Camden 
onwards, have thought that the fort to which the 
Danes fled after their defeat was Bratton Castle, 
the great camp on the heights above the figure of 
the white horse. This seems, however, a barren 
and waterless stronghold for a fortnight's siege, 
and it is more probable that the geweorc of the 
Chronicle was Guthrum's base-camp at Chippen- 
ham, and that the pursuit straggled over the fifteen 
or sixteen miles of low intervening country, the 
broken Danish forces making for their fortress 
much as the fugitives from Ashdown made for 
Reading, with the mounted victors pressing them 
hard. 

The very fact that the West-Saxons had taken 
to their horses implies that the fort was at some 
distance. Chippenham, like Reading, is on a 



886] The Testing of Alfred 177 

river, the Avon, and is fertile and well-watered. 
Asser's story of the capture of the horses and 
cattle outside the ramparts applies much better 
to a permanent camp in a pastoral district than 
to the high wind-swept earthworks of Bratton 
Castle. Ethelwerd, too, in his account of the 
battle, speaks of the Danish host as "the army 
that was at Chippenham," and it was to Chippen- 
ham that Guthrum returned after his baptism in 
Somerset. 

After a fortnight's siege, compelled, says Asser, 
by "hunger, cold, and fear," the Danes in the 
fort came to terms with the West-Saxons. The 
stereotyped alliterative phrase fame, frigore, seems 
rather ill-suited to a summer siege, but the condi- 
tions of surrender were so favourable to Alfred 
as to suggest that the vikings were desperate. 
"Then the here gave [the King] distinguished 
hostages, and swore mighty oaths that they would 
depart from his kingdom. They promised, also, 
that their king would receive baptism, and that 
they accomplished." Never before, according 
to Asser, had such a peace been concluded, for 
Alfred chose as many hostages as he liked, and 
gave none in return. 

About three weeks later, Guthrum, with twenty- \ 
nine picked men from his army, met "the West- \ 
Saxon King at Aller (Aire) near Athelney, and / 
Alfred was his sponsor at his baptism, "and the / 
'chrism-loosing' was at Wedmore, and Guthrum / 
was twelve nights with the King, who honoured./ 



\ 



178 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

him and his companions with many gifts (feo).'* 
The little village of Aller still cherishes with pride 
the memory of the royal baptism of more than a 
thousand y6ars ago. By a curious coincidence, 
the tiny ancient church contains a font, ap- 
parently of Anglo-Saxon workmanship, which was 
discovered in a pond in the rector's garden, and 
has now been restored to its original use. ^ 

Guthrum received the Christian name of -^thel- 
stan or Athelstan, a name foimd in the West- 
Saxon royal family. In some of the chronicles of 
the twelfth century his companions and many of 
his people are said to have been baptised with him, 
but this is a gratuitous addition to the contem- 
porary sources. Half a century earlier, in 826, 
a similar ceremony had taken place in the Empire, 
on a much larger scale, when Louis the Pious stood 
godfather to the converted Danish King Harold, 
the Empress Judith was godmother to Harold's 
queen, and hundreds of pagan Danes of both sexes 
followed the example of their rulers. 

From the choice of Aller for Guthrum's baptism, 
it would appear that, after the peace of Chippen- 
ham, Alfred had withdrawn to his base-camp at 
Athelney. Ethelwerd, indeed, erroneously puts 
the baptism in "the marshy island of Alnea." 
After the ceremony the two kings and their reti- 
nues went to another Somerset royal "vill," 
Wedmore, between the Polden Hills and the 

' There is a representation of King Alfred in modern stained 
glass in this church. 




THE ANGLO-SAXON FONT AT ALLER, SOMERSET 
From Snell's Memorials of Old Somerset 



886] The Testing of Alfred 179 

Mendips. Here, on the octave of the baptism, 
the "chrism-loosing" took place. This was the 
removal of the chrismale, the linen cloth or band 
which was worn on the head for a week, to pro- 
tect the sacred baptismal chrism, or anointing oil. 
On the eighth day it was laid aside with the white 
robes of baptism, and Ethelwerd seems to imply 
that it was Ethelnoth, the ealdorman of Somerset, 
who performed the service of unbinding the 
chrismale for Guthrum.^ The "chrism-loosing" 
was probably succeeded by royal feasting and 
carousing, and the Danish King returned to Chip- 
penham laden with costly offerings. 

In translating the passage from the Chronicle 
which describes these incidents, Asser renders the 
Anglo-Saxon feo, the gifts or wealth which Alfred 
bestowed on the Danes, by the curious word 
(Edificia. This has been taken as a scribal error 
for beneficia, ^ and elsewhere Asser makes pecunia, 
quite accurately, the equivalent of feo. On the 
whole, the reading beneficia may probably be ac- 
cepted, but it is just possible that Asser uses 
CBcLificia in a general sense, for things wrought or 
made, and it has even been suggested that the 
word, throughout Asser's Life of Alfred, has the 

' Dux . . . Ethelnoth dbluit post lavacrum eundem in loco 
Vuedmor. Ethelwerd, himself an ealdorman, had a special fund 
of information about ealdormen and their doings. Cf. supra, 
pp. 163, 166, Ethelnoth of Somerset and Odda of Devon; also 
Chapter IV., p. ii8, Ethelwulf of Berkshire'. 

^ By Lappenberg. Followed by Pauli and Stevenson, Asser ^ 
p. 279; cf. p. 18, c. 20. 



i8o Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

peculiar meaning of shrines, reliquaries, or articles 
of goldsmith's work. ^ 

The conditions of the compact made at Chip- 
penham between Alfred and the Danes are only- 
known from the entry in the Chronicle, with 
Asser's translation. In accordance with them 
Guthrum was to leave the West-Saxon kingdom, 
and to become a Christian. It was, perhaps, 
natural that the connection of Wedmore with the 
carrying out of the second part of the agreement 
should have caused what was really the treaty of 
Chippenham to be commonly called, by modem 
writers, the treaty of Wedmore, while even in 
later mediaeval days, Guthrum's settlement in 
East Anglia came to be regarded in the light of a 
feudal grant from Alfred of "the province of the 
East-Anglians and of the Northumbrians." 

From Wedmore Guthrum returned to Chippen- 
ham. Thence, in fulfilment of his pact, he moved 
across the West-Saxon border, and took up winter 
quarters in the territory of the Hwicce, the ancient 
Mercian under-kingdom. Here he remained for 
a year, and then, in 880, "the army (here) went 
from Cirencester into East Anglia, and settled the 
land, and divided it." 

It was in 879, while Guthrum was still at Ciren- 
cester, that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes the 
landing at Fulham, on the Thames, of "a band of 
vikings {hloth wicenga)," the first appearance in 
the Parker manuscript of that dread name. They 

' Plummer, Life and Times, pp. 46, 47. 



886] The Testing of Alfred i8i 

wintered in Danish Mercia, but in the next year 
they crossed the sea to "Frankland," and took 
up winter quarters at Ghent. 

It is now that the scribe of the English annals 
shows special knowledge of the movements of the 
Northmen on the Continent, though he often puts 
these movements a year later than the correspond- 
ing entries in the foreign chronicles. This may 
be due to dating each viking "wintering" from 
its conclusion rather than from its beginning, but 
the whole chronology of the period is involved in 
great obscurity.^ 

Asser, also, is well acquainted with the Continen- 
tal history of the time. Not content with follow- 
ing the Chronicle, he adds touches of his own which 
suggest that he may have been in "Prankland" 
during these troubled years. In particular is this 
the case with his account of the eclipse of the sun 
in 879, where he omits the statement in the Chron- 
icle that it lasted for an hour, but fixes the time 
of its appearance with curious precision, "between 
None and Vespers, but nearer to None."^ It is 

^ Steenstrup's theory (Normannerne, ii., p. 74, note i), accepted 
by Professor Earle and by Mr. Plummer {Two Sax. Chron. 
Parallel, ii., p. 95; Life and Times, p. 50), that from 878 to 896 
the Chronicle postdates by a year the entries relating to the 
Northmen, can hardly be maintained. The Chronicle gives the 
right dates for the death of Louis the Stammerer and for the 
battle of Saucourt. It is doubtful when the Anglo-Saxon year 
began at this period. (Cf. Stevenson, Asser, p. 282, note i.) 

* It has been calculated that the total solar eclipse of Oct. 29, 
878, would be visible in North Germany from about one o'clock 
in the afternoon to about half- past three, and that None would 



i82 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

probable that Asser is here alluding to the total 
solar eclipse of October 29, 878, not to the small 
partial eclipse of March 26, 879, but the Chronicle, 
in the annal for 885, dates the death of Louis the 
Stammerer, which took place in 879, "in the year 
when the sun was darkened." 

There was some reason for associating these 
solar phenomena with the deaths of kings and 
with public disaster. If Wessex enjoyed com- 
parative peace, the ravages of the Northmen in 
the Empire had never been more terrible and per- 
sistent than in the years which immediately fol- 
lowed the death of Louis the Stammerer, King of 
the West Franks, the son of Charles the Bald. The 
incessant dynastic quarrels and selfish intrigues 
of the Carolingian princes and their nobles offered 
an irresistible opportunity to the more restless 
and adventurous vikings, who still preferred 
piracy to colonisation. Flanders was harried, 
all the country between Scheldt and Somme was 
ravaged, while the ships of the Northmen sailed 
up the Elbe and Rhine, and the imperial palace 
at Nimwegen was burnt to the ground. In spite 
of occasional successes, the Franks of both the 

fall at about two o'clock, and Vespers at about a quarter to four. 
This agrees very closely both with Asser's time, and with the 
foreign Annals which put the eclipse of 878 at "about the hour 
of None," or "after None." It is possible that the Anglo-Saxon 
chronicler confused the two eclipses when he connected the 
death of Louis the Stammerer with the darkening of the sun. 
Cf. Stevenson, Asser, Introd., §§ 48, 90, pp. Ixxviii., cxxviii., and 
p. 280, note on c. 59. 



886] The Testing of Alfred 183 

eastern and western kingdoms were forced to 
bow before the storm. "Fear and trembling fell 
upon the inhabitants of the land." By day and 
by night the flames from burning churches and 
monasteries lit up scenes of desolation, wasted 
fields, and flying bands of monks and nuns, laden 
with relics and ecclesiastical treasures, and of 
homeless men of all sorts and conditions, with 
their wives and children. 

It was, perhaps, the imminence of the danger 
which lent an exaggerated importance to the 
battle of Saucourt, in the August of 881, when 
Louis III., the new King of the West Franks, 
intercepted the Danes on their return from a pre- 
datory expedition in the Somme valley, and de- 
feated them with great slaughter. Those who 
escaped took to their horses, and rode back to 
their camp. The victory, which inspired the fine 
contemporary vernacular poem, the Ludwigslied 
or "Song of Louis," in praise of the young King, 
is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,' and 
was worked into the later legendary history of the 
viking wars. Yet in reality it did but little to 
check the plunder raids. 

In the winter of 88 1 the northern leaders God- 
fred and Sigfred fortified themselves in a strong 
position at Elsloo on the Maas. From this centre 
they devastated the surrounding district, burnt 
Cologne, and, a last humiliation for the Carolin- 
gian house, set fire to the palace of Charles the 

» Sub. ann. 88 1. 



1 84 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

Great at Aachen, and stabled their horses in the 
chapel. In 882, after the death of the king of 
the East Franks, another of the short-lived de- 
scendants of Louis the Pious, fresh Danish in- 
cursions led the Emperor Charles the Fat, son 
of Louis the German, to intervene in person. 
He besieged the fort at Elsloo, but just when 
success was in sight, he concluded what was 
regarded as a shameful treaty with the viking 
leaders. Godfred submitted to baptism, and 
received a grant of the Frisian and Flemish fiefs 
once held by Rorik. Sigfred and the other chiefs 
were bought off with a heavy tribute, for which 
the remaining treasures of the Church were laid 
under contribution. Two hundred ships, laden 
with spoil and captives, it was said, sailed for 
Scandinavia, while the Elsloo army took advan- 
tage of the sudden death of the young victor of 
Saucourt, Louis III., to harry the land of the 
West Franks, from their new base at Conde, a 
nunnery on the Scheldt. Hincmar, Archbishop 
of Rheims, fled with the body of St. Remigius 
and other treasures to Epemay, where, towards 
the close of the year 882, he ended his long and 
stormy life. The Conde vikings spent the spring 
of 883 in harrying Flanders, and went into winter 
quarters at Amiens on the Somme, while another 
host wintered at Duisburg, on the Rhine. 

The West Frankish magnates and their King, 
Carloman, brother of Louis III., now called on the 
Christian viking Sigfred to negotiate a peace with 



8861 The Testing of Alfred 185 

his former comrades. Twelve thousand pounds 
of silver induced the army to break up their camp 
at Amiens. A detachment of the host went east- 
wards to Lorraine; the remainder made a descent 
on the coast of Kent. 

"The aforesaid army (here),^* says the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle, "divided into two; one part went 
east, the other went to Rochester, and beset the 
city (ceastre), and built a fort {fcBsten, geweorc), 
about themselves." In Latinising this passage, 
Asser makes the English ceastre into civitas, and 
renders fcesten by castellum, and geweorc by arx. 
The distinction is perfectly clear between the old 
Roman town and the temporary Danish earth- 
work at its gate. ^ It is also clear that the men of 
Kent, who in 865 had ignominiously bought off 
the vikings, were now, twenty years later, able 
and ready to defend their country, while a West- 
Saxon fleet and army were prepared to support 
them. 

Already, in 882, Alfred had "fared out to sea 
with ships," to fight "four shiploads of Danish 
men." He had taken two of the enemy's vessels, 
and slain their crews, and had forced the remain- 
ing two to surrender. Now, in 885, when he has- 
tened to Rochester with the fyrd, the Danes for- 
sook their fort (geweorc), their prisoners, and the 
horses they had brought with them, and fled 
over sea to the land of the Franks. 

It is probable that Guthrum-Athelstan was in 

' Cf. infra, Chapter VII., p. 239. 



/ 



i86 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

league with the invaders, for in this year he broke 
his peace with Alfred, and as soon as Rochester 
was safe, the West-Saxon fleet sailed for East 
Anglia, "for the sake of plunder" according to 
Asser. At the mouth of the river Stour, which 
divides Suffolk from Essex, they encountered 
sixteen viking ships, and, after a sharp fight, slew 
the crews, and captured the boats. As they re- 
turned with their booty, however, they were met 
by a "great fleet of vikings," and were, in their 
turn, defeated. 

The document known as the treaty of Alfred and 
/ Guthrum probably marks the conclusion of this 
i struggle, and its provisions are sufficiently favour- 
able to the West-Saxons to justify the assumption 
that the East-Anglian Danes felt themselves beaten 
\ It lays down the boundaries between the kingdoms 
of East Anglia and Wessex: "up on the Thames, 
and then up on the Lea, and along the Lea to its 
source, then straight to Bedford, then up on the 
Ouse to Watling Street." Norfolk, Suffolk, and 
Essex remained to Guthrum, with the modern 
counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon, and 
parts of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. But 
Alfred gained the remainder of Bedfordshire and 
Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and, above all, 
Middlesex, with London. 

The Chronicle states that in 886 King Alfred 
"settled" Lundenburg, and all the English {An- 
gel cyn) turned to him, save those who were in cap- 
tivity to the Danish men, and he then committed 



886] The Testing of Alfred 187 

the burg to ealdorman Ethelred, to hold. Asser, 
who misunderstood the passage in the Chronicle, 
makes Alfred "restore" the city, and render it 
habitable, "after burning of towns, and slaughter 
of people." Ethelwerd and Henry of Hunting- 
don definitely mention a siege, perhaps misled by 
the likeness between the words gesette, (" settled," 
"restored," and bescette, "besieged."^ Henry of 
Huntingdon even adds that the greater part of the 
Danish garrison had joined the vikings on the 
Continent. Whether by direct conquest or by 
treaty, however, it is certain that the city now 
passed into Alfred's hands. "" 

Twelve years later, the fortifications of this im- 
portant strategic position were still a matter of 
anxiety to the great King and his advisers,^ and 
the fact that one of Alfred's new mints was estab- 
lished there shows that it was recognised as a valu- 
able trading centre. Henceforward Mercia ceases 
to be an independent English kingdom, though 
the great Mercian ealdormanry or earldom had 
its own witan, and retained a large measure of 
autonomy under Ethelred, who is sometimes even 
called rex, and his wife, Alfred's daughter, Ethel- 
fiasd, the "Lady of the Mercians." "♦ 

' Two Sax. Chron., ii., p. 99; Plummer, Life and Times, p. 
109; Stevenson, Asser, p. 324, note on c. 83. 

' Von Ranke calls him the second founder of London. — Welt- 
geschichte, vi., ii., p. 43. . ^ Infra, Chapter VII., p. 243. 

* She witnesses one of Ethelred's charters as conjux in 880, 
but the date, which does not agree with the indiction, is probably 
wrong. She cannot have been born before 869. 



i88 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

The further clauses of the treaty between Alfred 
and Guthrum regulate the relations between the 
adjacent West-Saxon and Anglo- Danish poptila- 
tions. It is a formal treaty, sworn by King Alfred 
and the English witan on the one part, and by King 
Guthrum and the people (theod) in East Anglia^ 
on the other, for themselves and for their descen- 
dants. It fixes the wergild of a noble, English or 
Danish, at eight half-marks of gold, probably 
equalling the twelve hundred shillings of the thegn's 
wergild in West-Saxon law. The English ceorl is 
equated with the Danish liesing or f reedman ; each 
has a wergild of two hundred shillings. The 
king's thegn who is charged with a serious offence 
must clear himself by the oath of twelve king's 
thegns: a lesser man may purge himself by the 
oath of eleven of his peers and of one king's thegn. 
Finally, every man is to "know his warrantor, for 
men, and horses, and oxen" — to have, that is, 
some one who will answer for his honesty if he 
gets into trouble in buying slaves or stock; while 
in commercial transactions between East Anglia 
and Wessex, the trader is to give hostages as an 
earnest of upright dealing. 

Criminal law and merchant law, border-feuds 
and trade, thus form the staple of the first written 
treaty between Danes and Englishmen. A later 
ordinance on ecclesiastical and religious matters, 

' This alone should have shown, as Schmid pointed out in his 
edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws, that the treaty could not have 
been drawn up in 878, before the "settlement" of East Anglia. 



886] The Testing of Alfred 189 

which was issued by Edward the Elder, professes 
to recapitulate the decrees of Alfred and Guthrum, 
"when English and Danes fully accepted peace and 
friendship." 

The peace of 886 lasted, indeed, for seven years, 
and when Guthrum-Athelstan died in 890, the 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle treated his memory with 
respect, and recalled the facts that he was Alfred's 
godson, and the founder of the East- Anglian 
kingdom. It remained for Ethelwerd to dismiss 
him to the lower regions, and for William of 
Malmesbury to dilate on the pride and tyranny 
of his rule, and to compare him to the Ethiopian, 
who cannot change his skin. ^ 

Alfred was now, for the first time, really at 
liberty to give himself, with an undivided mind, 
to the government of his kingdom, and it is likely 
enough that many of his reforms were carried out 
in the quiet years when the West-Saxon chronicler 
found little to record save foreign politics, the 
deaths of distinguished men, and the English mis- 
sions to Rome. 

The intimate connection between Wessex and 
the Papal court, broken in the troubled times 
that followed the death of Ethelwulf , was resumed 
when, in the winter of 882, the "good Pope Mari- 
nus" succeeded the murdered John VI 1 1. He 
freed the English School in Rome from tribute, at 
the request of King Alfred, say the contemporary 

' He was buried, according to the Annals of St. Neots, at 
Headleaga in East Anglia, probably Hadleigh in Suffolk. 



iQO Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

authorities, and sent the West-Saxon King many- 
gifts, and a piece of the cross on which Christ suffered. 

Four missions from England to Rome are men- 
tioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, after the 
death of Marinus, which occurred about 884. In 
887, ^thelm, the ealdorman of Wiltshire, in 888, 
the ealdorman Beocca, and in 890 the abbot 
Beornhelm, carried "the alms of the West-Saxons 
and of King Alfred," to the Eternal City. In 888, 
Ethelswith, Alfred's sister, may have accompanied 
the envoys, for her death at Pavia is recorded in 
that year. In 889 the Chronicle notes that no 
formal embassy was despatched, but that Alfred 
sent two couriers, ^ with writings. 

It appears, then, that an annual mission to Rome 
was regarded as normal, but whether the "alms'* 
were looked on as tribute, or as a voluntary offer- 
ing, cannot be determined, for with the change of 
scribes after 891, the entries in the Chronicle stop 
as abruptly as they began. The darkness lifts 
for a moment, only to fall again with tantalising 
suddenness on the gleam of undiscovered coimtry 
thus revealed. When the new scribe begins his 
work, all other matters are lost in the absorbing 
interest of the second Danish war. 

Still more obscure, but of great interest, is an 
entry which is found, under the year 883, in most 
manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, though 
it is omitted in the ancient Parker manuscript, 
and by Asser and Ethelwerd. 

^ Hleaperas, "leapers." 



886] The Testing of Alfred 191 

Sighelm and ^Ethelstan [it states], took the alms 
to Rome which King Alfred promised to send thither, 
and also to St. Thomas in India and to St. Bar- 
tholomew, when they besieged the Danish army at 
London, and there, thanks be to God, they were very 
successful, according to the promise. 

The doubtful authority of this ambiguously 
worded passage has been commonly taken as a 
proof that England was in direct relations with 
India in the time of King Alfred. The annal, 
however, seems rather to imply that Alfred pro- 
mised to send alms to India than that he actually 
sent them, and the whole incident of the vow is 
suspicious, since there is no evidence for a West- 
Saxon siege of London before 883. Moreover, the 
clause about Pope Marinus and the gift of the 
true cross, which recurs under 885, in connection 
with the Pope's death, is also inserted here, and 
the relic is called by its technical Latin name, 
lignum Domini. The journey from Wessex to 
Hindustan, too, though not impossible, would be 
so great an achievement in the ninth century 
that some further record of it might be expected. 
Yet Alfred is content, in his translation of Orosius, 
to follow the account of India in the original text, 
without comment or expansion, while in his 
independent explanation, in the Boethius, of the 
terms "India" and "Thule," he simply treats 
"the Indias" as the south-eastern limit of the 
earth, "the outermost of all cotintries," as a con- 



192 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

temporary Anglo-Saxon life of St. Bartholomew 
calls it, with "dark land" on one side, and on the 
other side "the sea Oceanus." 

William of Malmesbury's twelfth-century ver- 
sion of the story hardly adds to its credibility, for 
he turns Sighelm, who was probably the Kentish 
ealdorman of that name, into the tenth-century 
bishop of Sherborne, and says that he "penetrated 
into India" and brought back gems which were 
still to be seen in the church at Sherborne. 

But if Alfred's mission to India can only be ac- 
cepted with reservations, it is not unlikely that he 
vowed alms to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, or 
that his envoys went on from Rome to Palestine 
and the East. The legendary association of St. 
Thomas and St. Bartholomew with India was 
well-known in the ninth century, and is foimd in 
sources which would be easily accessible to Alfred, 
such as the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Martyr- 
ology, Bede's Martyrologium, or Aldhelm's poem 
on the Twelve Apostles. ^ 

"India," as the plural form of the name in 
Anglo-Saxon shows, was used in a wide sense in 
the early Middle Ages,^ and the relics of St. Bar- 
tholomew had been translated to Italy in the 
ninth century ^ while the famous shrine of St. 
Thomas was at Edessa. He suffered, writes the 

' Stevenson, Asser, p. 286 flf., note on c. 65. 

' Gibbon thinks the envoys may have gone to Egypt. — Decline 
and Fall, c. 47. Cf. the "three Indias" of the legend of St. 
Bartholomew. — Stevenson, op. ciL, p. 288, note 3. 

J First to Beneventum, then to Rome. 



886] The Testing of Alfred 193 

Anglo-Saxon martyrologist, at Calamina, a city 
(ceastre) in India, and his body was brought away 
from India, to the town called Edessa, where he is 
buried in a silver chest, suspended by silver 
chains. ^ 

Asser is probably speaking the truth when he 
says that he had seen gifts and read letters sent 
to Alfred by Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem. A 
begging letter from the Patriarch Elias III., ad- 
dressed to the rulers of Western Europe, was 
delivered by messengers to the Emperor Charles 
the Fat in 881, and a tenth-century book of Leech- 
doms contains medical prescriptions which Domi- 
nus Elias (Domne Helias) , patriarch of Jerusalem, 
ordered to be repeated to King Alfred. ^ 

A stream of Christian pilgrims was, indeed, at 
this time, passing incessantly from West to East. 
About 865, a Prankish monk, Bernard, even drew 
up, from his own experience, an itinerary for the 
use of pilgrims to Jerusalem, and the mingling of 
adventure with devotion which made the pilgrim- 
age movement so popular in Western Christendom 
would have a peculiar attraction for Alfred's active 
and enquiring mind. The last entry in the Alfred- 
ian Chronicle before the change of hand in 891 
breaks with imaginative extravagance into the 
monotonous series of sober facts: 

Three Scots came to King Alfred from Ireland 

* Cf. Sir W. Hunter, The Indian Empire, p. 290. 

» Cockayne, Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms, R. S., ii., p. 290. 



194 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

(Hibernia) in a boat without any oars.* They had 
stolen away because they would be on pilgrimage 
for the love of God, they recked not where. The 
boat in which they voyaged was wrought of two and 
a half hides, and they took with them meat for seven 
nights. And in about seven nights they came to 
land in Cornwall, and they went straightway to 
King Alfred. Thus are they named, Dubslane and 
Macbeth (Maccbethu) and Mselinmun. 

They went, adds Ethelwerd, on to Rome, and then 
to Jerusalem, and one or more of them may have 
returned, with news of far countries, to the hospit- 
able West-Saxon court which had speeded them 
on their way. 

The peace of England in these years formed a 
striking contrast to the confusion and distress 
on the Continent, where, after the sudden death of 
the young West Prankish King Carloman, Charles 
the Fat, grandson of Louis the Pious, had once 
more gathered the divided kingdoms into a sem- 
blance of union, a parody of the mighty Empire of 
Charles the Great. He ruled, writes the English 
chronicler, over all the land which his great-grand- 
father, the old Charles (Charlemagne) held, except 
the country of the Bretons. He was, the scribe 
continues, the nephew of Charles the Bald, whose 
daughter Judith married King Ethelwulf, a re- 
current note in the English sources, which shows 

' Butan (zlcum gerethrum implies also without a rudder, for 
the boats were steei-ed with an oar. 



886] The Testing of Alfred 195 

that the connection with Judith of Flanders was 
not forgotten. 

Signs of disintegration appeared at once in the 
newly consolidated Empire. The Old-Saxons and 
Frisians won a great victory in 884 over the vikings 
from Duisburg, but the advantage thus gained in 
the north was more than counterbalanced in the 
west when Sigfred's fleet sailed up the Seine, 
entered Rouen, compelled the fort at Pontoise 
to surrender, and in November, 885, began the 
famous siege of Paris, which lasted till October, 
886. 

The events of those eleven months stirred the 
whole of Western Europe. Paris, which flourished 
like the Paradise of God, shining like a queen 
among lesser cities, now saw from her island citadel 
the viking ships lying in the Seine, covering, says 
Abbo of St. Germain, the poet of the siege, more 
than two leagues of the stream. In the long struggle 
which followed, the city was splendidly defended 
by its heroic Bishop Gozlin, and by Odo, Count 
of Paris, the ancestor of the Capetian kings of 
France. Both sides showed themselves masters 
of the art of war, and the offensive operations of 
the Northmen, supported by siege-engines and 
mines, were at least as scientific as the Prankish 
defence. 

When at last the incompetent Emperor Charles 
the Fat came to the relief of the beleaguered 
garrison, he sealed his own doom by concluding 
a disgraceful treaty with the invaders, and paying 



196 Alfred the Truthteller [878- 

a heavy tribute of seven hundred pounds of silver. 
The vikings, permitted by this treaty to winter in 
Burgundy, only changed the scene of their depre- 
dations. They besieged Sens, and in the spring 
of 887 they again appeared in the Seine, and sailed 
up the Marne to Chezy; here, and in a camp near 
the river Yonne, they spent the two following 
winters. 

"The army Qiere),''^ writes the well-informed 
English chronicler imder the year 887, "went up 
through the bridge at Paris, and then up along 
the Seine, to the Marne, to Carici (Chezy), and 
sat there and within Yonne, two winters in the 
two places." With a perhaps unconscious feeling 
for cause and effect, he goes on to describe the 
deposition of Charles the Fat, in November, 887': 

Then was the Empire divided into five, and five 
kings were hallowed, Arnulf, who dwelt in the land 
east of the Rhine, and Rudolf, who took the middle 
kingdom (Burgundy), and Odo, who had the western 
part (the kingdom of the West Franks), and Berengar 
and Witha (Guido of Spoleto), the land of the Lom- 
bards, and the lands on that side of the mountains. 

To be strong to withstand the "heathen men" 
was the essential condition of acceptance for the 
rulers of Western Christendom in the ninth cent- 
ury. Here the Carolingians had failed, and they 
were ruthlessly supplanted by the men who knew 
how to meet the popular need. But the flood 

* He died in January, 888, not, as the Chronicle states, in 887. 



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886] The Testing of Alfred 197 

which submerged the house of Charlemagne bore 
the house of Egbert on to fortune. There is no 
"Song of Alfred" to set against the Ludwigslied, 
yet the ephemeral triumph of Saucourt is far less 
deserving of such a tribute than the great deliver- 
ance of Ethandun, and the winning back of London. 

Note on the Site of the Battle of Ethandun 

For this site Yattenden and Yatton may be re- 
jected without question, as impossible derivations 
from the West-Saxon Ethandun. Domesday Book 
shows that the Berkshire Eddington comes through 
Eddevetone from Eadgife-tun, "Eadgifu's town," and 
the Somerset Edington from Edwinetune, "Edwin's 
town." Heddington is written Edintone in Domes- 
day Book, but in other early documents it has an 
aspirate, and seems to represent "Hedding's town." 
The Wiltshire Edington alone consistently appears 
as Edendone, a Norman form of Ethandune, in Domes- 
day Book, and as Ethendun in the thirteenth century. 
It was granted to Romsey Abbey by King Edgar in 
the tenth century, and is probably the royal manor 
or "ham" which Alfred bequeathed to his wife.^ 
This philological evidence for the identity of Ethan- 
dune and Edington in Wiltshire is the more valuable 
since the military arguments, though pointing on the 
whole to a like conclusion, are not altogether con- 
vincing. 

The theory^ that Ethandun is the Berkshire Edding- 

» Stevenson, Asser, p. 273 ff., note on c. 56, 2. 
* Held by Beeke, Regius Prof, of Mod. Hist, in the University 
of Oxford, 1801; cf. Lysons, Magna Britannia, i., p. 162. 



198 Alfred the Truth teller [878- 

ton, near Hungerford, and that Iglea is in the Berk- 
shire hundred called Eglei in Domesday Book, has 
very little to recommend it. This Eddington could 
only be reached in two days from the borders of 
Somerset by long forced marches, and Berkshire, 
which had borne the brunt of the campaign of 871, 
stood rather noticeably aloof from the struggle of 
878. 

Heddington in Wiltshire is a more plausible sug- 
gestion.^ Taking Brixton Deverill near Warminster 
as Ecgbryhtessiane, Iglea is identified with Highleigh 
Common near Melksham, and the site of the battle 
is placed on the Roman road from Marlborough to 
Bath, on the Downs, opposite Chippenham. The 
chief objections to this theory are the distance of 
Heddington from Somerset, and the implied pres- 
ence of the Danish army as far north as Chippen- 
ham. It is true that, as subsequent events show, 
Chippenham continued to be used as a base-camp by 
Guthrum until he withdrew to Cirencester. But it 
is equally clear that Alfred's base was at Athelney, 
and since there had been skirmishes between West- 
Saxons and Danes in the spring of 878, it is improbable 
that in May the main Danish force was stationed some 
fifty miles from the Somerset fenland. This difficulty 
would be avoided by accepting the location of Ethan- 
dun at Edington on the Polden Hills, ^ but this leaves 

' Milner, Hist, of Winchester, 1798, p. 129, note 3, followed by 
Earle, Two Saxon Chron. Parallel, p. 307, and Sir J. H. Ramsay, 
Foundations of England, i., p. 253. 

* The suggestion of Dr. Clifford, Bishop of Bristol, Proceed- 
ings of Somerset Archaeological and Natural Hist. Soc, 1877, vol. 
xxiii., pp. 11-27, 50-53- Cf. Rev. C. W. Whistler, "King Alfred 
and the Danes," in Memorials of Old Somerset, ed. F. J. Snell, 



886] The Testing of Alfred 199 

no obvious site for Iglea, and involves a backward 
movement on the part of Alfred, after he had met the 
shire-forces at Ecgbryhtesstane, and a long and strenuous 
two days' march, through Selwood Forest to Butleigh 
or to Edgarley, which is supposed to be Iglea, at the 
foot of Glastonbury Tor, and so up the northern side 
of the Polden Hills, and along the ridge to a point 
above Edington. This theory also carries with it the 
assumption that the fort to which the defeated Danes 
fled after the battle was either Bridgewater or the 
Downend earthworks on the Poldens/ 

If, on the other hand, Camden's old identification 
of the battlefield of Ethandun with Edington in 
Wiltshire be accepted, it gives a site roughly half-way 
between Chippenham and the meeting-place of the 
West-Saxon army on the Somerset border, situated 
on the royal demesne, and suited by the confor- 
mation of the ground to the Danish tactics, recalling, 
indeed, somewhat remarkably, the conditions at 
Ashdown. 

The early antiquaries may have been influenced 
in their choice of this site for Alfred's victory by the 
fact that the face of the chalk down, below Bratton 
Castle, about a mile from Edington, bears the figure 
of a white horse, modernised now out of all primitive 
semblance, but apparently akin to the white horse 
of the Berkshire Ashdown, and popularly connected 
with the defeat of the Danes. 

1906, and "King Alfred's Campaign from Athelney," in Saga- 
Book of Viking Club, vol. i., part ii., pp. 153-197. 

^ Cf. Greswell, The Story of the Battle of Edington, and Early 
Wars of Wessex, by Albany F. Major, ed. by C. W. Whistler, 
M.R.C.S., Camb. Univ. Press, 1913, which contains a lucid 
statement of the arguments for the Somerset site. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE VICTORIES OF PEACE 

I. The Alfredian State 

i j A LFRED had saved England for the English. 

/ / -t* A harder but more congenial task now lay- 
before him: the administration of the land which 
he had won. As far as can be gathered from the 
scanty contemporary records, the country had 
been thoroughly demoralised by the Danish wars. 

^ The monasteries and churches were, in the King's 
own words, "all harried and burnt"; the land was 
wasted and impoverished; the coming generation 
was growing up in ignorance and lawlessness. 
The army, too, lacked organisation, the Church 
needed endowment, the law required re-enactment. 
That Alfred set himself to solve these various 
problems in a practical and statesmanlike spirit, 
that he had a definite and well-considered policy, 
may be inferred from the whole tenor of his later 
life and from the avowed aims which appear in his 
writings. His conception of the State and of the 
meaning of public obligation was not original. 
His standards were those of his age. His political 
philosophy came to him from the Fathers, as 

200 



The Alfredian State 201 

explained by the theorists of his own time. His 
one great merit, for which he is worthy to be held 
in remembrance, was that he stood forth, first as 
the defender of his people, and then as the inter- 
preter to them of the mysteries of the House of 
Life. It was not books alone that he translated 
into the language which all could understand, but 
ideals and theories of conduct. 

In imaffected simplicity and sincerity he strove 
to be a perfect king, as the ninth century un- 
derstood the virtues of kingship. Alfred's often- 
quoted words in his translation of Boethius on the 
Consolation of Philosophy will bear repetition. 

I desired tools and materials [he said, expanding 
the original text] to carry on the work which I was 
set to do, which was that I should virtuously and 
fittingly steer and direct {steoran and reccan) the 
authority committed unto me ... it has ever been 
my will to live worthily while I lived, and after my 
death to leave to them that should come after me my 
memory in good works. ^ 

In his choice of the phrase "steer and direct" 
to describe the work of administration, the King 
may have remembered a passage in his earlier 
translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care which pic- 
tures rule and authority as a storm of the mind, 
tossing the ship of the heart on the waves of thought, 
driving it hither and thither in narrow straits of 
words and works, and well-nigh wrecking it on 

' XVII., p. 40. 



202 Alfred the Truthteller 

great rocks from which the skill of the steersman 
alone can save it.^ In another passage in the 
Consolation, Philosophy speaks of God as "a stead- 
fast Ruler and Steersman, and Rudder and Helm," 
who directs and rules all creatures as a good steers- 
man guides a ship ^ ; Asser, too, compares Alfred to 
a good steersman, guiding the treasure-ship of 
the State to the quiet haven, in spite of a wearied 
crew, and the stormy seas of life. ^ 

The favourite mediceval image of the "ship of 
state" or the "ark of the Church," riding on the 
troublesome waves of this world, would come home 
with a special force to the sea-loving West-Saxon 
King, who accepted the guidance of his people as 
a divinely appointed responsibility, and regarded 
his royal authority as a trust to be used for the 
benefit of humanity. Here, again, Alfred was but 
echoing the current teaching of Christian political 
philosophers, as they, in turn, handed on a more 
ancient tradition. 

The connection of the Latin substantive rex, a 
king, with the verb regere, to rule, and its forms 
rexi, rectus, and with the adjective rectus, right, 
or straight, had, doubtless, helped to give rise to 
the idea that the true king is the righteous ruler, 
which is one of the commonplaces of mediaeval 
political thought. The poet Horace, writing be- 
fore the birth of Christ, tells how boys in their 
play would repeat the proverb : Rex eris . . . si 

' IX., p. 58. => XXXV., § iii., p. 97. 3 c. 91. 



The Alfredian State 203 

recte Jades (Thou shalt be king, if thou do right), 
a saying which somewhat loses its point in Pope's 
eighteenth-century English version: 

Yet ev'ry child another song will sing : 
Virtue, brave boys! 'tis Virtue makes a King. 

Christianised and elaborated by St. Augustine 
and St. Gregory, this theory of kingship became 
familiar to mediaeval students through its inclu- 
sion in those most popular seventh-century books, 
the Origins or Etymologies and the Sentences of 
St. Isidore of Seville. Kings, Isidore explains, are 
so called because they rule, {reges a regendo vocati)j 
but he does not rule who fails to correct {nan 
regit qui non corrigit). The king who does right 
keeps his name, the evil king loses it. The chief 
virtues of a king are justice and "piety" or "pity," 
(pietas),^ but of these two "piety" is especially 
praiseworthy, for justice by itself is severity. 
From the Etymologies and Sentences Isidore's 
definitions passed to the political theorists of the 
eighth and ninth centuries, Alcuin, the friend of 
Charles the Great, Hrabanus Maurus, the author 
of a comprehensive work on the Universe, Jonas 
of Orleans, Sedulius Scotus, and Hincmar of 
Rheims, all of whom wrote treatises on govern- 
ment, "Mirrors of Princes," for the young rulers 
of the Carolingian house. These books were new 
when Alfred became King. Hincmar, Archbishop 

' The word pietas has both meanings in medieval Latin. 



r 



204 Alfred the Truthteller 

of Rheims, a man who was the oracle of his time, 
only died in 882, and the child Alfred must have 
seen him in Paris in 856 when he married Ethel- 
wulf of Wessex to Judith, the daughter of Charles 
the Bald. 

Imperial Capitularies and the canons of Church 
Councils and synods repeated the political teach- 
ing of these learned and powerful ecclesiastics, 
for whom Church and State were indissolubly 
connected, and the king or Emperor was the Vicar 
of God, ruling by divine sanction. They looked 
back to the Western Fathers, especially to St. 
Isidore, St. Gregory, and St. Augustine, and behind 
them, again, to St. Peter and St. Paul, and the 
writers of the Old Testament. The theory of 
kingship thus evolved was high and austere. 
God's Vicar must govern justly; he must rule 
himself if he would rule others; he must give peace 
to his people, protect the weak, comfort the poor, 
and be a terror to evil-doers. ( E ight colu mns, says 
Sedulius Scotus, support the power of a just king — 
truth, patience, munificence, eloquence, correc- 
tion of the wicked, encouragement of the good, 
light taxation, equitable justice for rich and poor^ 
The influence of this reasoned theory of monar- 
chy was^sl^ong upon Alfred, but mingled with it 
was another conception, borrowed from early 
\/ Germanic tradition, the conception of the king, 
the cyning, a word which suggests origin rather 
than function, and recalls the political significance 
of the kindred group in the days when kingship 



The Alfredian State 205 

was more patriarchal than official, an Inherited 
authority and dignity, based on nobility of birth, 
and deriving its title from divine descent. 

The Germanic cyning was the lord of his people, 
the hlaford^ or loaf -giver, the theoden, head of the 
theod or folk, the drihten, a term afterwards re- 
stricted to God, the Lord of all. Hence he was in 
close personal relation with his subjects, their 
tribal chieftain, their natural leader and protector, 
as they were his natural followers and supporters. 

Both^elements entered into Alfred's view of the 
royal power and responsibilities. If he translated 
rex by cyning, he enriched the Germanic term with 
deeper meaning drawn from Roman, Judaic, and 
Christian sources. He felt that authority had 
been entrusted to him by God, and that he had 
been set to do a special work in the world. He 
recognised, as Cicero had recognised before him, 
that the imrighteous ruler was like a wild beast, 
"recking no more of friend or foe than a mad dog." ^ 
He saw the vanity of external pomp and show, 
and knew that the bad king, when stripped of the 
trappings and power of royalty, was much like 
one of the thegns who served him, if, indeed, he 
were not ' ' still more base." ^ " Every one knows," 
he wrote, "that all men come of one father and 
one mother. . . . True nobility is of the mind, 
not of the flesh. "3 

Yet echoes from older creeds mingled with 

^ Boethius, XXXVIL, § i., p. in. 

» Ibid., XXXVII., § i., p. III. » Ibid., XXX., § ii., p. 69. 



2o6 Alfred the Truthteller 

these philosophic and Christian utterances. 
Though Alfred could call the Greeks a "foolish 
folk" for believing that Jove was the highest god, 
because he was of the royal kin, and in those days 
they knew no other god, but worshipped their 
kings for gods, ^ he does not seem to have questioned 
his own descent from the heroes and gods of his 
race, for the West-Saxon royal genealogy which 
traces his ancestry to Woden and "Geat" is not 
only found in the Parker manuscript of the Chron- 
icle, but is copied by Asser, while the regnal table 
which gives his descent from Cerdic is appended 
both to the Chronicle and to the English transla- 
tion of Bede's history. 

The preface to Alfred's Laws illustrates the 
continuity of tribal custom and the force of the 
traditional reverence for antiquity : 

1 dared not set down much of my own in writing, for 
it was not known to me which would please those who 
should come after us. ... I then, Alfred, King of 
the West-Saxons, showed these (laws) to all my wise 
men (witan), and they then said that it pleased them 
all to hold them. 

Even the outward signs of royalty which Alfred 
scorned as philosopher, he assumed without hesita- 
tion as king — the crown or "head-ring," the lofty 
throne, the glittering robes of state, the body- 
guard of thegns, in their war-equipment, with 

\Boethius, XXXVIIL, § i., p. 115. 



The Alfredian State 207 

"belts and golden-hilted swords,"^ the hoarded 
treasure of gold and gems, the spacious hall, 
the rough plenty and primitive splendour of the 
homely West-Saxon court. Much of the secret 
of his strength lay, indeed, in this quiet accep- 
tance and idealisation of the actual, the calm good 
sense and sanity of judgment which prevented 
him from attempting impossibilities, the faith 
and sympathetic imagination which widened for 
him the bounds of the possible. 

Closely related to the mediaeval theory of king- 
ship was the corresponding theory of the meaning 
and sanction of law. Here, again, there was a 
conflict of principles, the Roman imperial concep- 
tion of law as the voice of a sovereign authority, 
the Hebraic belief in the revealed will of a divine 
Lawgiver, the Germanic reverence for traditional 
custom. Here, too, mediaeval political philoso- 
phers of Germanic race, Roman training, and 
Christian creed were groping after a system which 
should unify and consolidate these heterogeneous 
materials, and bring pagan custom into a vital 
relation with the law of the Christian God. 

In England, the direct influence of Roman law 
was slight, but in the seventh century, after the 
adoption of Christianity, some part of the ancient 
custom-law of Kent was apparently written down 
in Roman fashion, though in the vulgar tongue, 
by the clerks who came over with St. Augustine. 
What King Ethelbert and his advisers thus did 

^Boethius, XXXVIL, § i., p. iii.. 



2o8 Alfred the Truthteller 

for Kent, King Ine, Alfred's reputed ancestor, did 
for Wessex, and when Alfred in turn set himself 
to the task of stating and interpreting the law of 
his kingdom, there were already precedents for 
him to follow, in the written "dooms" (domas) 
of his predecessors, — themselves but a small 
portion of the still unwritten custom, — in the 
canons of the Church, the "dooms" of ecclesiasti- 
cal synods, and, above all, in the Scriptures, the 
books of the Hebrew law, and of its fulfilment in 
the law of Christ. 

There is a striking passage in the Consolation 
of Boethius, ^ in which, when Alfred translated it, 
he may have seen the reflection of his own thoughts 
of God and the law. God, says Philosophy or 
"Wisdom," is Himself "king and lord and well- 
spring and beginning and law and wisdom and 
righteous judge." In the English version the 
Latin lex is rendered by cb (law)^ and the Latin 
arbiter by dema (judge), the "deemster" or de- 
clarer of "dooms," and in his "Code" of law the 
King wrote of the "dooms" of Moses, and of 
Christ's ce, even as Ine had set down ce or law and 
"kingly dooms" (cynedomas). 

Alfred, then, clearly thought of law, ce, as the 
principle of good, the will of God, which was 
essential righteousness. If instinct and early 
habit made him revere the custom-law as a sacred 
impersonal deposit from the inherited wisdom of 

» XXXIX., § xui., p. 136. 

' From the same root as the Latin cbvus. 



The Alfredian State 209 

the past, he would derive from his study of the 
Bible the idea of a personal lawgiver, a human 
instrument, by whom the knowledge of God's 
will might be conveyed to man. Such a lawgiver 
was Moses ; such in his degree was Ine of Wessex ; 
such would Alfred himself be — the interpreter of 
eternal truth and justice to his generation. 

This attitude towards abstract law and its 
concrete expression goes far to explain the sig- 
nificance of Alfred's own "dooms," which have 
come down to us in a tenth-century manuscript, 
in intimate connection with the "dooms" of Ine, 
and with an original West-Saxon version of the 
Ten Commandments, and of other Biblical pas- 
sages. 

If from one point of view Alfred's dooms may 
be classed with his literary works, ^ from another 
they belong to the administrative history of his 
reign. They are, indeed, closely bound up with 
his whole theory of government, and with the 
educational policy which is involved in it. They 
are no mere enunciation of tribal custom, but a 
compilation from many sources, selected with 
system and method. A great body of imwritten 
custom-law still lay behind them. They no more 
covered the whole field of political and social life 
than the King's translations from the Latin covered 
the whole field of knowledge, but, like those trans- 
lations, they were inspired by a conscious purpose, 
and, like them, too, they gave the people, in the 

^ Cf. injra. Chapter IX., p. 326 ff. 
X4 



210 Alfred the Truth teller 

tongue that they could understand, the things 
that were most "needful" for them to know. 
More fully even than the Prankish capitularies 
to which they have been compared they fall into 
line with an ordered scheme of administration, 
and seek to bind together the scattered threads 
of Kentish, Mercian, and West-Saxon law, to add, 
reject, amend, and harmonise, and to reconcile 
Germanic tradition with the law of the God of the 
Hebrew and the Christian . 

The short personal introduction with which 
Alfred makes the transition from the biblical and 
historical sections of his Code to the English laws 
shows the King in his literary workshop, with his 
scribes about him, collecting materials, judging, 
selecting, dictating, organising, or in consultation 
with his witan, deciding how best to enforce 
and "hold" the venerable customs of his fore- 
fathers. 

I then, Alfred king [he writes] gathered these (old 
"dooms" ) together, and bade that they should be 
written down, many of those which our forerunners 
held, those which pleased me, and many of those 
which pleased me not I rejected, with the counsel of 
my witan, and bade that they should be held in an- 
other fashion. For I dared not be so bold as to set 
down much of my own in writing, for it was not known 
to me which of these would please those who should 
come after us. But of those which I found either 
from the days of Ine my kinsman, or Offa the Mer- 
cian king, or Ethelbert, who first of the English people 



The Alfredian State 211 

received baptism, I gathered together here such as 
seemed to me the most worthy, and the others I 
rejected. I then, Alfred, king of the West-Saxons, 
showed these to all my witan, and they then said that 
it pleased them all to hold them/ 

The Code opens with the Ten Commandments, 
the words which the Lord spake to Moses, followed 
by extracts from the Mosaic law, as contained in 
the book of Exodus, and from the gentler, more 
humane teaching of Christ, who came not to 
destroy the law, but to fulfil it. This introduc- 
tory portion ends with the Christian golden rule 
in a negative form: "What ye will not that other 
men should do unto you, that do ye not unto 
other men." "From this one doom," comments 
Alfred, "a man may bethink him how he should 
judge every one rightly : he needs no other doom- 
book." Yet he did not ignore the "other doom- 
books" to which he had access, "synod-books," 
or the collections of canons and ecclesiastical laws 
which "the holy bishops and other noteworthy 
witan of the English" had issued after the con- 
version of the land to Christianity, and the dooms 
which remained from the days of his Christian 
predecessors, Ine of Wessex, Offa of Mercia, and 
Ethelbert of Kent. Behind the first Christian 
King he did not go, for with him began the era 
of written custom-law. 

Alfred's Code may thus be divided into four 

' Cf. supra, p. 206. 



212 Alfred the Truthteller 

main parts: — an ethical and historical introduc- 
tion, derived from the Bible and from the history 
of the Church; his personal introduction, or pre- 
face ; his own collection of dooms, including a table 
of wergilds; and the dooms of Ine, distinguishable 
as a separate document by the opening clause: 
"I, Ine, by God's gift king of the West-Saxons 
. . . took counsel concerning the salvation of our 
souls and the state of our kingdom." 

Though Alfred's legal work was sufficiently im- 
portant to become the foundation of later com- 
pilations, and to be referred to as " the doombook," 
an acknowledged authority, the arrangement of 
his Code suggests rather a juridical treatise than 
a manual of practical law. Beginning with the 
divine sanction of all law, as he understood it, 
he was specially concerned to show how Christian 
mercy had softened and himianised the stem 
justice of the Mosaic dispensation. Finding the 
death penalty in the Jewish law, where Germanic 
law only demanded a money fine, he assumed, 
quite unhistorically, that the change was due to 
the influence of Christianity. The bishops and 
witan, runs the historical preface, 

set down for the sake of the mercy, the "mild heart- 
edness," which Christ taught, for most misdeeds, that 
by their leave secular lords might without sin take 
a money fine (bot) for the first offence . . . they set 
down then in many synods the fines (bote) for many 
human misdeeds, and wrote them in many synod- 
books, here one "doom," there another. 



The Alfredian State 213 

Thus Alfred linked his own dooms, with their 
money fines, to the penal enactments of the book 
of Exodus on the one hand, and to the older law 
of the West-Saxon kingdom on the other. It is 
even possible that he translated, or caused to be 
translated, the Ten Commandments and the pas- 
sages from the Bible which precede his dooms, 
with the deliberate intention of teaching his il- 
literate secular ministers, as he translated the 
Pastoral Care for the instruction of his ignorant 
clergy. 

Asser' paints a somewhat highly coloured pic- 
ture of the King, insisting on his officials — ealdor- 
men, reeves, and thegns (comites, praepositi, ac 
ministri) — fitting themselves by education for 
their judicial duties, and describes how those who 
were too old or slow-witted to learn to read for 
themselves would get younger men to read " Saxon 
books" aloud to them. 

Dr. Liebermann has suggested^ that these 
"Saxon books" were the dooms of Alfred and Ine, 
and though this is, of course, only a guess, it is 
worth noting that Ine's preface expressly states 
that his object is to establish "right law," and to 
prevent its perversion by his "ealdormen and 
subjects." The underlying motives which actu- 
ated the drawing up of Alfred's Code may throw 
light on its peculiar arrangement. The doom- 

» C. 106, 28 flf. 

' " King Alfred and Mosaic Law," Trans, of Jewish Historical 
Sac. of England, vol. vi., p. 21, 1912. 



214 Alfred the Truthteller 

books of the three lawgivers, Moses, Alfred, and 
Ine, are juxtaposed, not amalgamated, and they 
do not follow each other in chronological order, 
for Alfred's own dooms are placed between the 
archaic law of the Jews and the archaic law of the 
West-Saxons. 

Of the dooms of the days of Off a and Ethelbert, 
which Alfred mentions in his preface, there is no 
clear trace in his code, though the table of wergilds 
for injuries to various parts of the body evidently 
corresponds to the similar table in the Laws of 
Ethelbert, if with many changes and modifications, 
due to the different tariffs in use in Kent and in 
Wessex. Kentish and Mercian elements may also 
have been taken up into the Code from the canons 
of church synods, such as the famous Legatine 
Council of 787, where, in the presence of King Offa 
and his witan, the decrees were read both in Latin 
and in the vulgar tongue. The text of Alfred's 
dooms need not, however, be forced into conform- 
ity with the preface at every point, nor is there any 
reason to suppose, with Sir Francis Palgrave, that 
a separate code was issued for Mercia, with Offa's 
Laws appended, in the place occupied by the Laws 
of Ine in "the statute for the West-Saxons." 

The West-Saxon code, as it stands, is, no doubt, 
both self-contradictory and redundant. It would 
be impossible to work it as a whole, for not only is 
much of the Mosaic portion inapplicable to ninth- 
century Wessex, but Ine's dooms conflict in several 
instances with the parallel sections of the dooms 



The Alfredian State 215 

of Alfred, while both collections present a strange 
medley of ecclesiastical decrees, public and private 
law, and rural custom, in which the only unity 
is a unity of principle. 

Still, in spite of inconsistency and obscurity, 
Alfred's vernacular dooms, with their core of 
ancient custom, form a unique and invaluable 
record of early English law. Curt, elliptical, 
disjointed, their very heterogeneity is character- 
istic. They show a State in the making, inchoate 
still, and weak, but reaching out towards cen- 
tralisation, and finding it, to a certain extent, in 
the person of the King. They show, moreover, 
the King gathering up the broken fragments of 
the older tribal society, and fitting them into 
some sort of coherent whole. 

Strong as was the force of custom, Alfred at 
least was able to rearrange the custom-law, to 
decide in what way one or another part of it should 
be observed, and to frame new rules to meet new 
cases. If he did not dare to set down much of 
his own in writing, it was no small matter that 
he dared to innovate at all, for it meant that the 
king was powerful enough to be a constructive 
statesmen. 

To speak of "statesmanship" in the ninth 
century may, indeed, seem absurd. It would 
be futile to attempt to separate legislation from 
administration, or to distinguish the different "or- 
gans of government" in the rudimentary West- 
Saxon kingdom. But those organs existed already 



2i6 Alfred the Truthteller 

in germ, and much depended on the way in which 
they were developed. In Alfred's reign the lines 
were laid down on which development should 
proceed, and in the work of political organisation 
the King took the leading part. To Alfred him- 
self, government seemed a very personal thing. 
To rule men well was to him, as to St. Gregory 
the Great, the "art of arts," the "craft of crafts." 
Nowhere has he revealed himself more fully than 
in his additions to the reflections of Boethius on 
earthly possessions and authority. ^ 

The sixth-century philosopher spoke of authority 
as to be desired only as a means of developing 
natural talents for government, which otherwise 
would perish without fulfilling their proper func- 
tion. Alfred's mind seized on this suggestive 
thought of the natural ruler, played round it, ex- 
panded it, probably with the help of the current 
commentaries on the text of the Consolation, and 
adapted it to the conditions of Christian kingship. 

No man [he wrote] can prove his full powers, his 
"craft," nor "direct and steer" authority, without 
tools and materials. . , . These are a king's materials 
and the tools with which he governs: — he must have 
a well-peopled land; he must have men of prayer 
(gebedmen), "bedesmen," and men of war (fyrdmen) , 
and men of work (weorcmen) . . . without these 
tools no king can prove his full powers {crcBJt). For 
his materials, also, he must have sustenance for the 
three orders, his tools . . . land to dwell in, and gifts, 

' Boethius, XVII., p. 40. 



The Alfredian State 217 

and weapons, and meat, and ale, and clothes, and 
whatever else the three orders need. Without these 
he cannot keep the tools, and without these tools he 
cannot do any of those things which he has been 
bidden to do. 

Here is a clear recognition of the art of govern- 
ment as the essential function of the true king, 
and a distinct conception of the king as a crafts- 
man, carrying out the commands of a Divine 
Master by means of human tools. The idea of 
the three orders of men, the oratores, bellatores, 
and laboratores, was, in itself, not new. It went 
back, perhaps, to the Guardians, Warriors, and 
Husbandmen of Plato's Republic, as it went for- 
ward to the doctrine of the Three Estates of the 
Realm. But, even if Alfred derived it from a 
commentary,^ or from one of his learned clerks, 
his use of it was quite original, and he made it his 
own by translating it into terms of his everyday 
life, and finding in it an expression of his admin- 
istrative difficulties and problems. 

Wessex, in the last quarter of the ninth century, 
was still a tribal State, Germanic in spirit and 
institutions, full of crude barbaric survivals from 
the days of heathenism, but Christianised, and, 
in some degree, centralised, by the efforts of a 
long succession of churchmen and kings. The 
machinery of administration had already been 
elaborated, the links between central and local 

' Cf. infra. Chapter IX., p. 369. 



2i8 Alfred the Truthteller 

government had been forged, when the rude shock 
of the Danish wars came to expose the latent 
defects of the system, and to hasten the slow 
process of social disintegration which often accom- 
panies a period of political transition. The legal 
myth which makes King Alfred the founder of the 
English constitution originally sprang from a dim 
perception of the truth that England owes her 
peculiar form of government in large measure to 
the two facts that in the ninth century Wessex 
was nearly conquered by a foreign power, and 
that it was saved by the representative of the line 
of Cerdic. 

As the deliverer from the Danish peril, the 
West-Saxon King won a position of unquestioned 
supremacy over the shattered remnants of rival 
royal houses, while the destruction of ancient 
landmarks by the vikings obliterated local tradi- 
tions, and left him free to experiment in new direc- 
tions. The ties of blood and race, on the other 
hand, tempered his reforming zeal with reverence 
for the past, and made him content to build on the 
old foundations. 

The emphasis laid by Alfred on the individual 
responsibility of the king was, doubtless, due rather 
to his sense of the weakness of his "tools," the 
three orders, than to any personal ambition, but 
his absolute power was none the less real for being 
unsought. 

It is interesting to compare the preface to his 
" dooms " with the earlier prologue to the "dooms " 



The Alfredian State 219 

of Ine. Whereas Ine only legislates with the ad- 
vice and teaching of his father, the sub-king 
Cenred, and of the bishops, ealdormen, and dis- 
tinguished witan and clergy, Alfred does all the 
preHminary work himself, makes his own selec- 
tion from the "synod-books," and has his own 
opinion as to what is best for his purpose. He 
apparently consulted his witan chiefly about the 
advisability of excluding certain "dooms" from 
the written collection, and decreeing that they 
should be "held in another fashion." When his 
"Code" was drawn up, indeed, he submitted it 
to the approval of the magnates, and received 
their assent to its provisions, and he was chary 
of introducing novelties which might be displeas- 
ing to those who came after him, but if he respected 
his witan he evidently managed them, and in the 
whole transaction there is no hint of popular 
co-operation. 

The government of the West-Saxon State at ^ 
this time seems, in fact, to have centred in the 
court and household of the king, the little knot 
of confidential officials, widening sometimes into 
the larger group of the witan, who formed the 
ruling class of the country, from whose ranks the 
public servants were drawn. " King's ealdormen " 
and "king's thegns," "king's reeves," and "king's 
clerks," gathered about their royal lord and master 
in the "king's hall" of Anglo-Saxon documents, 
the "court" or curtus regius of Asser's biography, 
the "palace" or palatium of contemporary Latin 



220 Alfred the Truthteller 

charters. From the king's hall they went forth 
to act as presidents of the local courts of justice, 
captains of the local military forces, or collectors of 
local dues, always, if Asser may be believed, under 
the strict personal supervision of the king himself. 

Some of them, perhaps, would be ministers of 
the household in the narrower sense, the king's 
marshal or "horse thegn," his seneschal or "dish 
thegn," his butler or pincerna, his chamberlain 
or "rail thegn. "^ The Chronicle mentions the 
death of "Ecgulf the king's horse thegn" in 897, 
and Alfred's grandfather Oslac had been butler 
or pincerna at the court of Ethelwulf, but only 
faint traces of these offices appear in the reign of 
Alfred, nor did he claim any new or extraordinary 
privileges for the monarchy. If he issued decrees 
in the first person, and spoke of " my witan,''^ he 
was only following the example of Ine. 

Like his predecessors, too, he usually styled 
himself "king of the West-Saxons" {rex Occident- 
alium Saxonum) or "king of the Saxons" {rex 
Saxonum). In his literary works, and in the 
opening sentences of the personal preface to his 
dooms and of his will he calls himself simply "king 
Alfred " {Mlfred cyning) ; in the concluding passage 
of the preface to the laws and in the body of his 
will he is "king of the West-Saxons" {Westseaxna 
cyning), and though there are indications that after 
886, when he acquired London, he used the title 
of "king of the Anglo-Saxons" {Anglorum Sax- 

' Cf . infra, p. 254. 




ALFRED'S TOWER, STOURTON 

From CoUinson's Somerset, Vol. II 

Built by Henry Hoare, about 1722, near the probable site of " Egbert's Stone " 

Inscribed, under a statue of the king : " Alfred the Great, A.D. 879, on this 

summit erected his standard against Danish invaders," etc. 



The Alfredian State 221 

onum rex, Angul-Saxonum rex), the evidence for 
this is slight, and somewhat untrustworthy. 
UnHke his father and brothers in their Kentish 
charters, he never describes himself as "king of the 
West-Saxons and of the men of Kent" (Caniuari- 
orum), but this may be because only one of his 
extant grants relates to lands in Kent, for in a 
private Kentish land-grant which he confirms, he 
is so styled. 

In Alfred's laws, again, the fine for breaking 
into the king's hurh, or fortified house, was, as in 
the days of Ine, a hundred and twenty shillings, 
the fine for infringing the royal protection, or 
borh, an offence not mentioned in the laws of Ine, 
was five pounds of fine silver. Fighting in the 
king's hall was still, as in the seventh century, a 
capital crime, which left the Hfe and property 
of the offender at the mercy of the king. High 
treason, too, plotting against the king's life, or 
harbouring outlaws, was accounted by Alfred a 
capital offence, the one crime, as he says in the 
preface to his laws, to which Christian judges 
dared not show mercy, the Judas crime of betrayal 
of the lord. Yet even here, the same penalty is 
assigned to treason against lords of lower rank; 
the horror with which the deed is regarded is 
chiefly due to the conception of the sacredness of 
the personal tie between lord and vassal, though 
it is probably also influenced by the decrees of 
church synods, and the ecclesiastical reverence 
for "the Lord's Anointed." 



^/ 



222 Alfred the Truthteller 

If Alfred, moreover, formed his own judgments 
independently, the records of the meetings of the 
West-Saxon witan during his reign are sufficiently 
numerous to warrant the inference that they were 
habitually consulted by the King in matters of 
moment. They approve his laws, they advise 
him about his father's will. They witness his 
early arrangements with his brother concerning 
his inheritance, and his own later will. They 
attest the royal charters and share in the conclu- 
sion of the sworn treaty of peace with Guthrum 
and the East-Anglians in 886. The Mercian 
council, also, was practically independent under 
the powerful ealdorman Ethelred, while there is 
some evidence in the signatures to charters of the 
persistence of a separate council for Kent. 

Alfred, then, reformed through restoration. 
He revived the ancient institutions, and gave 
them new life and meaning. If he made the royal 
power a reality in England, and established the 
tradition of a strong personal monarchy, this was 
due to his own active and competent intervention 
in the work of administration, rather than to any 
deliberate centralising policy. But in an age 
when the maintenance of public order was the 
one crying need of the State, strength was the 
first quality demanded of the government, and it 
was because the West- Saxon kingship of the ninth 
century possessed this quality, that it was able, 
like the Tudor despotism in the sixteenth century, 
to tide the country over a difficult period of tran- 



The Alfredian State 223 

sition, to retain as well as to reject, to preserve 
the more sound and wholesome elements of the 
older society, and to give them an opportunity of 
tranquil development. 

Alfred's "Code," holding within it the earlier 
"dooms" of Ine, and expanding them with pro- 
visions designed to meet present emergencies, is 
typical of the way in which the customs of Wessex 
were handed down from generation to generation, 
and historical continuity was secured. 

Next to the king in social and political impor- 
tance stood the great lay nobles, the ealdormen 
and king's thegns, and the ecclesiastical dignita- 
ries. The ealdorman, though as a rule nobly born, 
was essentially a royal ofhcial, the head of a shire, 
the president of the shire-court, the leader of the 
shire forces. The usual Latin equivalents of 
ealdorman in the signatures to charters are dtix, 
comes, and, occasionally, princeps. 

Asser translates the ealdorman of the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle by dux, comes, or consul, while 
Alfred in his literary works uses ealdorman some- 
what generally to render the Latin dux, princeps^ 
rector, satrap, subregulus, or other terms denoting 
authority. If Moses, the leader and lawgiver of 
the people of Israel, refuses ealdordom or sover- 
eignty in the Pastoral Care,^ in the Consolation 
the two sons of Boethius, who were senators and 
magistrates, are described as ealdormen and 
getheahteras, or councillors,^ the precise terms 

^ VII., pp. 50-1. " X., p. 22. 



224 Alfred the Truthteller 

applied to the witan in their capacity of royal 
advisers. In the Orosius the military side of the 
office Is emphasised, and the ealdorman Arpelles, 
or Harpalus, leads the Median fyrd against the 
Persians.* In the English version of Bede, patri- 
cius is translated "high ealdorman," and the 
judge {judex) who tries the British martyr St. 
Alban is the dema or " doomsman," and ealdorman.^ 
The Alfredian Chronicle even describes Cerdic 
and Cynric, the founders of the royal house of 
Wessex, as "two ealdormen."^ 

The West-Saxon ealdorman seems to have been 
appointed by the king, possibly with the sanction 
of the witan. The office was, apparently, not 
hereditary, but was held for life, or during good 
behaviour. It involved heavy responsibilities 
and duties, balanced by considerable privileges. 
The ealdorman may have been endowed with 
official estates. He probably received a propor- 
tionate share of the profits of justice. By Alfred's 
laws, if his fortified house or burh were broken 
into, he was entitled to the same compensation 
as a bishop, a fine of sixty shillings, as against the 
thirty shillings of the ordinary thegn, the ninety 
shillings of the archbishop, and the hundred and 
twenty shillings of the king. 

A special fine of a hundred and twenty shillings 
was paid for fighting before the "king's ealdorman" 

- (I., XIL), XIX., pp. 52-3. 

'I., c. 7 (vii.), p. 34 ff.; c. 13 (x.), pp. 48-9 (heah ealdorman). 

3 Sub ann. 495. 



The Alfredian State 225 

in the "moot," or court of justice, and he had also 
a right to a fine of a hundred and twenty shillings 
if the "folk-moot" were disturbed by the drawing 
of weapons. The infringement of his peace, pro- 
tection, or borh, was valued at two pounds, where 
the archbishop took three pounds, and the king 
five pounds. With this high position went cor- 
responding obligations. The Chronicle shows the 
ealdorman fighting against the Danes at the head 
of his local troops, and giving, if needful, his life 
for his country, like Ethelwulf of Berkshire, who 
fell at Englefield. 

In Alfred's laws, again, the ealdorman is seen 
presiding in the "folk-moot," where he was assisted 
by a subordinate, "the king's ealdorman's jimior." 
It was his place to authorise the transference of a 
dependent to a new lord, in another district {hold- 
getcBl), and it was to him that the man applied who 
was too weak to beleaguer his foe for seven nights 
before proceeding to active vengeance, in accord- 
ance with the new restrictions on private feuds 
laid down in the laws of Alfred. 

"Let him ride to the ealdorman," runs the doom, 
"and ask him for help. If he will not help him, 
let him ride to the king, before he fights."' 

Captains, justices, policemen, and members of 
the great council of the realm, the ealdormen thus 
bound together central and local government in 
the days of Alfred, as in the days of his father. 
Yet they were never a very numerous body. 

' Alfred, 37, 38; 38, i; 38, 2; 42, 42, 1-7. 
15 



226 Alfred the Truthteller 

Eight is the highest number of duces signing a royal 
West-Saxon charter in Alfred's reign, and more 
often there are only three or four. 

The names of ealdormen, comites, or duces which 
occur in the ninth century, so far as they can be 
assigned to localities at all, are connected with 
Dorset, Somerset and Devonshire, Hampshire, 
Wiltshire and Berkshire, Surrey, Kent (where the 
ealdorman's office was probably an innovation), 
Essex, and Mercia. It appears fairly certain that 
each of the West-Saxon shires was normally under 
the rule of one ealdorman, while Kent was perhaps 
divided into two ealdormanries, ^ and in Mercia 
there seem to have been from three to five ealdor- 
men under the great prince Ethelred, suhregulus 
and patricius, Alfred's son-in-law. 

Alfred's ealdormen, at least in the earlier years 
of his reign, have no special personal distinction. 
Of the names which have survived, only three 
stand out with any marked individuality — Ethel- 
red the " Lord of Mercia" ; Ethelnoth of Somerset, 
according to Ethelwerd the companion of the 
King in his Athelney exile, the signatory of char- 
ters in 880 and 894, and one of the leaders in 
the campaign of 894; ^thelhelm or ^thelm of 
Wiltshire, his comrade in arms in 894, the bearer 
of Alfred's alms to Rome in 887, whose death the 
Chronicle records in 898. 

In Alfred's will he bequeaths a hundred man- 
cuses "to each of my ealdormen," and a like sum 

' Chadwick, A.-S. Inst., pp. 192, 193, 271. 



The Alfredian State 227 

to "^thelm and ^thelwold and Osferth," his 
two nephews and his kinsman, to whom he also 
left grants of land, while "Ethelred ealdorman" 
has a special bequest of a sword worth a hundred 
mancuses. It may be that -^thelhelm, the Wilt- 
shire ealdorman, and Alfred's nephew were one 
and the same, and the names of ^thelwold or 
^thelwald and Osferth also appear among the 
duces who witness land-grants in the late ninth 
century, and at the beginning of the tenth century. 
Hence it is quite possible that there were royal 
nobles holding official positions in Wessex in 
Alfred's reign, and that members of the royal 
house signed charters sometimes as filius regis 
or f rater regis, and sometimes as dux or ealdorman. 
Alfred himself, it must be remembered, was the 
son-in-law of the comes Ethelred "Mucill," and the 
brother-in-law of the ealdorman Athulf or Ethel- 
wulf, who is, possibly, identical with the dux 
Ethelwulf , who signs Mercian charters. 

Beside the ealdorman, his colleague, and per- 
haps to some extent his subordinate, worked 
another official, the "king's reeve" (gerefa), or 
steward, the administrator of the royal estates. 
In his public capacity, he was particularly con- 
cerned with matters affecting trade and commerce. 
Merchants had to bring before him in the folk- 
moot the men who were to accompany them in 
their journeys through the country, for whose 
good behaviour they were responsible. Thus 
when the legendary "three ships" of the vikings 



228 Alfred the Truthteller 

came to the Dorset coast, the reeve rode down to 
meet the strangers, and wanted to "drive them 
to the king's town," the royal "vill," which was 
his special sphere of action. The king's reeve ap- 
pears further, to have exercised judicial functions 
of a more general character. He could receive 
accusations in the "moot," and it has been sug- 
gested that he may have presided over a smaller 
and less formal court than the shire-moot, answer- 
ing to the hundred-moot of later days. ^ 

Asser speaks of the "ealdormen and reeves" 
{comites et praepositi) who gave judgment in their 
courts, or meetings, with an appeal to the king. 
The king's reeve, indeed, wheth'er in his judicial 
capacity he acted independently, or merely as the 
ealdorman's assistant or substitute in the shire- 
court, was primarily a royal servant, and the 
manager of the Crown lands, the king's agent, 
tax-collector, and bailiff. In some cases his func- 
tions seem to have been specialised. In the annal 
for 897 the Chronicle, in a list of noteworthy men 
who had recently died, mentions Beomulf the 
wicgerefa^ or "town-reeve" of Winchester, and 
Wulfric the king's horse-thegn, who was also 
Wealhgef era, 3 or Wealhgerefa, " the "Welsh com- 
panion," or "Welsh reeve," who may possibly 
have been the superior of the " king's horswealh" 
of Ine's laws, who rode on the king's errands, and, 

» Chadwick, A.-S. Inst., p. 228 ff. 

» Wicgefera in the Parker MS. (A). 

3 MS. A. ^MSS. B, C, D. 



The Alfredian State 229 

in virtue of this service, had a wergild of two 
hundred shillings.^ 

The guides (dudores) who escorted Asser through 
Sussex on his first visit to King Alfred were also 
probably "riding men" and minor local officials, 
while the "king's geneat" ^thelferth, who, with 
the king's reeve Lucumon, fell in the sea-fight of 
897, was, doubtless, an officer of a higher grade, 
a member, perhaps, of the royal household, with 
the thegn's wergild of twelve hundred shillings. 

It is probable that all the king's reeves, geneats, 
and immediate followers would belong to the 
comprehensive class of "king's thegns." The 
Chronicle, in the annal for 897, seems to include 
bishops and ealdormen, as well as town-reeves 
and "horse-thegns," under the term "king's 
thegns," and there can be no doubt that the thegn- 
hood was a large and heterogeneous body, ranging 
from the great noble to the petty official and the 
obscure country gentleman. 

The Latin eqmvalents for "thegn" are miles 
and minister, the soldier and the servant, and the 
thought of service, public or private, runs through 
all the various uses of the word. When in his will 
King Alfred left directions for his ealdormen and 
thenigmenn, he summed up the political and official 
world of ninth-century Wessex, much as he summed 
up the social world in the "ceorl or eorV'oi his laws. * 

^ For other explanations of the Wealhgerefa see the references 
in Liebermann, Gesetze, ii., ii., Vogt, 5, c. 
•Alfred, 4, 2, **ge ceorle ge eorle." 



230 Alfred the Truthteller 

Two centuries earlier, in the days of Ine, the 
lay nobles below the rank of an ealdorman seem 
to have been divided into "king's thegns" and 
"gesiths," and the gesiths, again, into landowners, 
with a wergild of twelve hiindred shillings, and 
landless men with a wergild of six hundred shil- 
lings. The gesiths, moreover, of the seventh 
century apparently formed a hereditary class of 
"born gentry," comprising both men and women. 
By Alfred's time the words gesith, gesithcund, are 
no longer found in the Anglo-Saxon laws, though 
the terms twelfhynde and sixhynde are retained, 
probably without any essential difference of 
meaning, and it would appear that the word thegn 
gradually took the place of the older gesith as the 
class name of the smaller gentry, even when they 
were not, like the "king's thegn," in a direct 
personal relation to the king. 

But this change did not fully come about till 
the tenth century, and here, as in so many other 
ways, the reign of Alfred is transitional. The 
king's thegn is not mentioned in Alfred's laws, 
but the treaty with Guthrum provides that a 
king's thegn accused of homicide may clear him- 
self by the oath of twelve king's thegns, where his 
social inferior requires only one king's thegn and 
eleven of his own equals. The charters, too, show 
lists of signatures of ministri, with a few ministri 
regis, who often attest grants of land made by 
the king to one or another of his "faithful servants" 
or thegns. Sometimes, when ministri regis and 



The Alfredian State 231 

ministri witness the same charter, both groups 
may be supposed to have been personal followers 
of the king, of varying degrees of dignity. Some- 
timeS, when the names of ministri are afterwards 
found among the duces, in spite of the danger of 
assuming identity of person from similarity of 
name, it is hard to avoid the inference that the 
ranks of the ealdormen were being recruited from 
the thegnhood. 

It has been suggested^ that the remarkable 
diversity of names among the comparatively few 
ministri who sign Alfred's charters may be con- 
nected with Asser's account of the system of 
rotation adopted by the King, whereby his "noble 
thegns" {mirpistri, satellites) were divided into 
three groups, each of which in turn spent one 
month in three at the royal court, doing many 
kinds of service, and returning home for the re- 
maining two months. 

There is, at least, evidence enough to show that 
Alfred had a small body of thegns always about 
him, and that the king's thegns, as a whole, while 
maintaining a close personal connection with the 
king, as their immediate overlord, were becoming 
a class of landed proprietors, with private houses 
and estates. The old personal tie of the Germanic 
comitatus, the tie which bound together King Hy- 
gelac and his thegn Beowulf as "board-fellows 
and hearth-fellows," was, perhaps, beginning to be 
replaced by a territorial relation. Yet the per- 

^Chadwick, A.-S. Inst., p. 314, note i. 



232 Alfred the Truthteller 

sonal bond still held. If the ancient Germanic 
princeps gave food and lodging, a war-horse, and a 
' ' blood-stained and victorious spear ' ' to his comites, ^ 
King Alfred could bequeath two hundred pounds 
to the men who followed him, to whom he "gave 
gifts at Eastertide." 

When, in his translation of Boethius, he had to 
treat of the pride of kingship, he broke away from 
his original to draw what was probably a picture 
of the West-Saxon court as he had seen it, with 
the goodly company of thegns who served the 
king standing about the throne, and overawing 
the multitude by the splendour of their elaborate 
war-equipment, their "belts and golden-hilted 
swords."* Nor had the thegns forgotten how to 
fight and die for their lord, as the records of the 
Danish wars prove. 

Alfred himself saw thegns and lords everywhere, 
in classical history and mythology, and in the Old 
Testament narratives, as well as in the early an- 
nals of his own people. In his writings, Cyrus of 
Persia, no less than Edwin of Northumbria, or 
Cynewulf of Wessex, is served by thegns. The 
"witch" Circe, who herself has a very great band 
{werod) of thegns, transforms the thegns of Ulysses 
into wild beasts. Uriah is David's "trusty thegn," 
David himself is Saul's thegn, and more righteous 
as a thegn than as a king. ^ 

' Tacitus, Germania, c. 14. ^ Boethius, XXXVII,, § i., p. iii, 

iOrosius (II., nil.), VI., pp. 72-3; Bede, ii., c. 13 (x.), pp. 

134-5; Boethius, XXXVIII., § i., p. ii6;Past. Care, III., pp. 34-5, 



The Alfredian State 233 

Alfred would seem, then, to have been the 
centre of a small circle of permanent followers, 
his household troops, his "men"; the recipients of 
his Easter gifts, his lytel werod, a term often used 
in early Anglo-Saxon literature for the personal 
following of young warriors who form the comi- 
tatus of a chief. Outside this nucleus was a wide 
and varying circle of king's thegns, landowners 
who did four months' service at court during the 
year, and outside these, again, a more indeter- 
minate ring of landowning twelfhynde men, and 
"thegn-born," but probably landless, sixhynde 
men, with a fringe of twyhynde ceorls, free peasants 
who owed service to the fyrd, but were, apparently, 
only called out when there was urgent need. 
Each great noble, too, had, in all likelihood, his 
own troop of immediate followers and henchmen, 
and when the summons to the army went forth, 
the countryside would be alive with bands of 
horsemen, glittering with helmet and "byrnie," 
or shirt of mail, with sword and spear and shield, 
while stolid companies of plodding footmen would 
wend their slow way to the place of meeting, 
carrying, perhaps, the rude axes, forks, and flails 
of their daily toil, or armed with stout cudgels cut 
from the forest. In his translation of St. Augus- 
tine's Soliloquies Alfred has inserted a picturesque 

L., pp. 392-3. Cf. the passages in Alfred' s translation of St. 
Augustine's Soliloquies, bk. i., pp. 35, 37, where he refers to 
his need for wealth to " have and hold " the men whom he has to 
support. Infra, Chapter IX., p. 332 flf. 



234 Alfred the Truthteller 

description of the gathering of the jyrd, the sol- 
diers streaming in from all sides, along the narrow 
muddy lanes and straight level highroads, to join 
the king, all alike, from the least to the greatest, 
seeking the same lord, by devious paths.* 

The only mention of the jyrd in Alfred's laws 
seems to refer to a full levy, since the fine for hurh- 
bryce, an offence which touched all classes, from 
the king to the ceorl, is doubled "when the fyrd 
is out." To break the peace of a private strong- 
hold, when the house-father had been called away 
to defend the community, savoured of treachery, 
and demanded exceptionally severe treatment. 

A widely accepted theory credits King Alfred 
with a threefold reform of the West-Saxon army, 
by the extension of the thegnhood, as a class of 
landed proprietors owing special military service, 
by the division of the fyrd into a reserve and a 
field force, and by the organisation of a scheme 
of national fortification. Yet, though there are 
signs that the military resources of the kingdom 
were strengthened during Alfred's reign, the exact 
course of this development is singularly hard to 
trace. In the first place, the King is supposed to 
have increased the number of thegns or mounted 
soldiers by compelling every man who held a 
minimum of five hides, or six hundred acres, of 
land to serve in the army with the thegn's full 
equipment of horse and armour, "helmet and 
bymie, and sword overlaid with gold." Such a 

^ Sol., bk. i., p. 44. 



The Alfredian State 235 

specialisation of military service in relation to a 
definite unit of land-tenure would be quite in 
accordance with early Lombard and Frank pre- 
cedents, and there is some evidence to show that 
five hides was regarded as the minimum holding 
of a well-armed soldier in England in the eleventh 
century. 

Alfred's connection with this "five-hide rule" is, 
however, merely a matter of conjecture, an as- 
sumption based upon inferences from two eleventh- 
century statements of older English custom, which 
give as one of the conditions imder which a ceorl 
might rise to the status of a thegn, the possession 
of five hides of his owij land. It would, moreover, 
be rash to conclude from rules framed to meet 
particular cases that at any period all holders of 
five hides were of necessity thegns. There are, 
indeed, instances of ceorls holding more than five 
hides who remained "rustics" {rustici). Nor do 
the archaic elements in the documents which treat 
of the ceorl who "thrives to thegn-right" clearly 
belong to the age of Alfred. The use of the old 
word gesithcund, and the apparent incorporation 
of a passage from the laws of Ine, seem rather to 
indicate that they may go back to the beginning 
of the eighth century, a date which would agree 
well with the frequent recurrence of units of five 
and ten hides in Bede's writings and in ancient 
land-grants. 

Ine's laws, too, as preserved by Alfred, imply 
that five hides was the normal holding of the 



236 Alfred the Truthteller 

twelfhynde West-Saxon, for the Welshman who 
held this amount of land became sixhynde,^ and 
the Welsh are usually estimated at half the value 
of the English. That military service was early 
bound up with land-tenure appears from the men- 
tion of the trinoda necessitas as a burden on land 
from the seventh century onwards, and from the 
clause in Ine's laws which condemns the gesiihcund 
landowner to forfeit his land for neglect of the 
fyrd. ^ 

The important part played by the thegnhood 
in the campaigns of 871 and 878, at Englefield 
and at Wilton, at Cynwit and at Athelney, shows 
that it was an organised, disciplined, and, to some 
extent, localised body, even before Alfred's acces- 
sion, nor were the West- Saxon troops of the later 
Danish wars so far superior to those of the begin- 
ning of the reign as to suggest that any far-reaching 
change had taken place in their numbers or con- 
stitution. Alfred, however, may well have carried 
further the system which was already in working 
order, a system which, maintained and developed 
by his successors, found documentary expression 
in the eleventh century, when it had become 
stereotyped. What little evidence there is seems 
certainly to point to an original specialisation of 
the fighting force on personal lines, early modified 
by a gradual territorialisation of military ser- 
vice, apparently in the ratio of one well-equipped 
horseman to every five hides of land. 

* Ine, 24, 2. ' Ine, 51. 



The Alfredian State 237 

Alfred's second reform, for which the Chronicle 
makes him directly responsible, the division of the 
jyrd into two bodies, was neither original nor par- 
ticularly successful.^ "The King," according to 
the annal for 893 (894), "had divided ^irs, jyrd in 
two, so that they were always half at home, half 
out, besides the men who had to hold the hurhsT 
This was a recognised military expedient, practised, 
if Caesar is to be believed, by the ancient Suevi, 
and attributed by Orosius to the Amazons, in a 
passage which may have caught Alfred's attention. ^ 
It corresponded to the similar arrangement for 
rotation of service among the king's thegns at- 
tached to the court, and is often explained to 
mean a reduction of the field force to enable the 
farmer-soldiers to cultivate their land and gather 
in their crops. 

The Chronicle places by the side of the fyrdmen, 
as a separate military group, "the men who had 
to hold the burhs.*' Field service is associated 
with the building and repair of bridges and forti- 
fications in the triple military obligation of the 
trinoda necessitas, fyrdung, hrycgbot and hurhhot. 
The Latin terms for these services, expeditio, 
pontis structura or restauratio, arcis constructio, 
munitio, restauratio, and so forth, occur constantly 
in early charters, but it is not easy to discover 
exactly what the duty of burhbot or its equivalent 
involved before the Danish wars. 

The idea of organised defence, of strongholds 

' Cf. infra, Chapter X., p. 397 ff. ' (I., X.), XV., p. 46. 



238 Alfred the Truthteller 

and cities of refuge, was, of course, familiar enough 
in ninth-century England. The ancient earth- 
works, British, Roman, or Anglo-Saxon, which 
still crown the English hills, were already old in 
the days of Alfred. The crumbling walls of many 
a Roman city, too, must have witnessed to former 
strength and security. There was a West-Saxon 
camp at Wareham, there were defences at Exeter, 
and an earthwork at Cynwit, before the peace of 
878 gave Alfred leisure to devise any new scheme 
of fortification. These, and such as these, were 
doubtless the arces which even privileged land- 
holders were bound to maintain by burhbot or 
fcEstengeweorc. 

The Anglo-Saxon word burh or burg, the borough 
of later times, seems always to have carried with 
it the thought of protection, enclosure, fortifica- 
tion. The burh of king or ealdorman or thegn 
was his strong house, guarded by palisade and 
gates, earthworks or ditch ; the enclosed or walled 
town was a burh. In the early Anglo-Saxon litera- 
ture, and in Alfred's own writings, burh and ceaster, 
the Latin castrum, are used indifferently for a city 
or town, as equivalents for the Latin civitas, urbs, 
oppidum. To Alfred, Troy, Athens, Rome, Con- 
stantinople, and Jerusalem were burhs, as well as 
Lundenbtirg, or Canterbury, the burh of the men 
of Kent. But though the burh, as opposed to the 
unprotected tun or ham, was a house of defence, or 
a fenced city, this was only one of its functions. 
If Alfred saw the "burh of the mind" in St. Greg- 



The Alfredian State 239 

ory's mcenia mentis, the mind's fortifications, 
he could distinguish between a "strong city," a 
fcBste burh, and an "open burh, which is not sur- 
rounded by a wall."^ The fortress pure and sim- 
ple, the Latin arx, appears in the Alfredian Chron- 
icle up to the year 893 (894), not as burh, but as 
geweorc, "work," or fcesten, "fastness," whether 
the "work" is wrdught by the Danes, as at Not- 
tingham and Chippenham, or by the West-Saxons, 
as at Athelney; — whether the "fastness" is the 
old Roman town of Exeter, or the earthwork from 
which the vikings blockaded Rochester in 885. 

Alfred renders arx, as applied to the Capitol, 
by fcBsten, ^ while Asser consistently uses arx to 
translate the geweorc of the Chronicle, and men- 
tions the Danish arx and vallum at Reading, the 
West-Saxon castellum of Wareham, and the arx 
at Cynwit. Towards the close of his work he 
waxes eloquent over Alfred's activity in restoring 
and foimding cities and towns, and in urging his 
negligent people to build forts, castella or arces; to 
carry out,' in fact, the duty of fcBstengeweorc or 
burhbot. He describes, further, how the forts 
which the King had ordered to be built were un- 
finished, or not even begun, when the Danes in- 
vaded England by land and sea, and how the 
workmen repented of their carelessness when their 
kinsmen were slain and their goods carried off, 

' Cf. Past. Care, XXXVIII., pp. 276-7. 

^ Orosius (II., VIII.), XIX., pp. 92-3, thcEt fasten . . . that 
hie Capitoliam heton {in arce Capitolini). 



240 Alfred the Truthteller 

and did their utmost to repair their error, by con- 
structing fortresses {arces) and doing other works 
of common utility for the common realm. 

Asser probably wrote this passage about 893, 
and it is interesting to recall that in 892 Haesten's 
vikings had stormed an unfinished fort, a geweorc 
or f CBS ten, in the Andredsweald. Still more sig- 
nificant is it that in the year 893 (894) the word 
burg or burh appears for the first time in the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle as the equivalent of geweorc, 
with the primary meaning, it would seem, of a 
fortress. When, in that eventful year, Haesten's 
army "went up the Thames till they came to 
Severn, and then up the Severn," the ealdormen 
of Mercia, Wiltshire, and Somerset marshalled 
their forces, with "the king's thegns who were at 
home in the forts (at thcem geweorcum), from every 
burh east of Parret, both west and east of Selwood, 
and also north of Thames and west of Severn, and 
a part of the North- Welsh people." 

It can hardly be doubted that these king's 
thegns were identical with "the men who had to 
hold the burhs,'' of whom the same annal speaks, 
and that the burhs from which they came were the 
forts or "works" in which they were "at home." 
This is confirmed by the chronicler's description 
of the situation of the burhs whence the king's 
thegns gathered for the blockade of Buttington 
in 893. They lay along the natural lines of de- 
fence of the country threatened by an army in- 
vading England by way of the upper Thames and 



The Alfredian State 241 

the Severn. The burhs to the east of the river 
Parret and the west of the forest of Selwood would 
guard northern Somerset, those on the east of 
Selwood would shield Wiltshire, and those north 
of Thames would protect Mercia, while the 
burhs west of Severn would hold the Welsh 
frontier, and co-operate with the loyal North 
Welsh. 

It is worth noting, too, that the leaders of the 
English forces were the ealdormen of just these 
western districts of Mercia, Wiltshire, and Somer- 
set. The whole passage in the Chronicle may be 
compared with the annals for 918 and 921, when 
the men of the "nearest burhs'' came from Here- 
ford and Gloucester in the one case, from Kent, 
Surrey, and Essex in the other, to help the shire 
forces against the Danes. 

There are, then, signs of an organised system of 
fortification in Wessex and EngHsh Mercia in the 
year 893, of the enforcement of the obligation of 
burhbot, in the form of the building and repair of 
strongholds, and of the performance of regular 
garrison duty by the king's thegns. The work 
of "bettering" the burhs was supplemented by the 
work of "holding" them. 

The statements of Asser and the Chronicle are 
borne out by the evidence of the document known 
as the "Burghal Hidage," which probably belongs 
to the early years of the tenth century. It gives 
a list of burhs, principally in Wessex, and connects 
a round number of hides with each. If, as seems 
16 



242 Alfred the Truthteller 

likely, it represents a scheme of military fortifica- 
tion, in which the land was grouped round burhs 
for purposes of home defence, the system may, 
quite possibly, have originated with Alfred, for 
many of the hurhs in the list figure in his wars 
with the Danes. 

Starting in Sussex, the Biu-ghal Hidage works 
round to the west by Hastings and Lewes, Chich- 
ester and Porchester, Southampton and Win- 
chester, Wilton and Shaftesbiu-y, Wareham and 
Exeter, Pilton near Barnstaple, Watchet and 
Axbridge, to Lyng and Langport on either flank 
of the isle of Athelney, Bath and Malmesbiu-y, 
and so to the Thames with Cricklade, Oxford, and 
Wallingford, and back to Surrey and the south.* 
It thus includes strongholds of many different 
types. If the hurhs "west of Severn" were, per- 
haps, mere earthworks, arces, geweorcas, others 
were great camps, like the castellum of Wareham, 
which had a nunnery within its enclosure, sea- 
ports, or ancient Roman cities. What was new, 
was apparently not the building of fortifications, 
but their co-ordination in a definite scheme. The 
old burhs seem to have become imits in a system 
of national defence, intended to guard the fron- 
tiers, while the new burhs, military, it may be, in 
origin, became in their turn units in a system of 

' The full list, including several hurhs omitted here, is given 
by Birch, Cart. Sax., iii., p. 671; by Maitland, Domesday 
Book and Beyond, p. 502; and by Chadwick, A.-S. Inst., p. 
204 £E. 



The Alfredian State 243 

national commerce, ^ and the word hurh, supplant- 
ing geweorc, as thegn supplanted gesith, added to 
its wide significance that specialised meaning of a 
fortress in which it is used in the Chronicle during 
the Danish wars of Edward the Elder. 

The need of an organised defensive policy had, 
doubtless, been impressed on Alfred by the suc- 
cesses of the vikings in their earlier invasions. 
In 839 they slew many men in London and Roches- 
ter. In 851 they "broke" Canterbury and Lon- 
don. In 860 they sacked Winchester before the 
fyrd could come to its help. Nottingham, Thet- 
ford, and Reading, Repton and Cambridge, 
Wareham and Exeter, all important strategic 
points, fell easily into their hands. Chippenham 
seems to have been undefended until they fortified 
it. But in 878, the sally of the king's thegns from 
the fort at Cynwit, and the building of the "work" 
at Athelney, marked a new departure in West- 
Saxon tactics. 

After the peace with Guthrum, Alfred appears 
to have used his leisure in applying the lessons of 
the past struggle. By 885 the defences of Roches- 
ter were sufficiently strong to enable it to stand 
a blockade. In 886, the newly acquired burh of 
London was given to Ethelred of Mercia to "hold," 
and twelve years later, in 898, a conference is re- 
corded, in which Ethelred and his wife Ethelflasd 

' Four of the new mints of Alfred's grandson, Athelstan, are 
in burhs which occur in this list: Wareham, Shaftesbury, Lang- 
port, and Wallingford. — Eng. Hist. Rev., xi., p. 759. 



244 Alfred the Truthteller 

took counsel with King Alfred and Archbishop Pleg- 
mund concerning the "restoration" {instauratio) 
of the city.^ In the campaigns of 893, 894, and 
895, too, the citizens or burhware of London were 
active, while the vikings were forced to raise the 
siege of Exeter, and were driven away from the 
Sussex coast by the burhware of Chichester. 
^/\ Alfred's military reforms were completed by the 
establishment of a small fleet of warships, the nu- 
cleus, it may fairly be said, of the future English 
navy. The constant danger of maritime invasion, 
the growing familiarity with the viking ships and 
methods of warfare, had perhaps reawakened in 
the West-Saxons something of their primitive 
instinct for seamanship. As early as 851 there 
seems to have been a sea-fight off Sandwich, in 
which the vikings were defeated, and in 875 
Alfred was able to lead a few ships to victory. 

Yet the ease with which the main Danish fleet 
sailed to Wareham in 876, and the apparent 
inability of the West-Saxons to guard the Chan- 
nel and the Irish Sea with a sufficient force, 
show that their naval strength was far inferior 
to that of the invaders. In 882, and again in 
885, it is true, Alfred defeated the Danes at 
sea, and in the latter year the Chronicle says that 
he sent a ship here"" to East AngHa, implying that 
he had already a fleet. It must, however, have 

» Birch, Cart. Sax., ii., p. 220, No. 577. 

"The English fleet is always described in the Chronicle as 
sciphere till the year 999. Laud MS. (E). 



The Alfredian State 245 

been small and inadequate, for though it was vic- 
torious in its first encounter with sixteen Danish 
ships, it could not stand the assault of the "great 
fleet of vikings" which intercepted it on its home- 
ward voyage. In 893 and the two following years, 
when the Great Army took ship for England, and 
the vikings brought large fleets into action, Alfred 
was content to check them with his land forces, 
without attempting to meet them at sea. 

It was not till 896 (897) that he made the origi- 
nal experiment in shipbuilding on which his pop- 
ular reputation as "the founder of the English 
navy" chiefly rests. He "caused long ships to be 
built against the ascas,'' "the ashes," or Danish 
vessels; 

they were fully twice as long as the others, some had 
sixty oars, some more. They were swifter, steadier, 
and also higher than the others. They were fashioned 
neither in the Frisian nor in the Danish manner, but 
as it seemed to him that they might be most useful.^ 

If these figures are to be taken at all literally, 
Alfred's fine vessels would seem to have been 
actually about twice the size of the ordinary Dan- 
ish warship. The Gokstad boat had thirty-two 
oars, almost exactly half as many as Alfred's long 
ships, while the accounts of the battle of Cynwit 
give the Danes a fleet of twenty-three ships, and a 
loss of from eight hundred and forty to twelve 
himdred men. As some of the vikings escaped, 

» A. S. Chron., sub ann., 897. 



246 Alfred the Truthteller 

this makes a probable average of about fifty men 
to a ship, * a likely enough crew for a thirty-oared 
vessel. 

Though in their only recorded action Alfred's 
new ships proved somewhat unwieldy, they seem 
to have created a precedent, for in the Danish 
wars of the tenth century there is good reason 
to believe that the typical English ship had sixty 
oars, ^ with, of course, many variations in size and 
capacity. Edward the Elder, moreover, appears 
to have carried on his father's naval policy, since 
in 91 1 he could gather together a fleet of a hundred 
sail. 

It is pleasant to think that the building of the 
long ships, one of the last achievements of Alfred's 
arduous Hfe, was a labour of love. The spirit of 
the sea breathes through his writings. He is in- 
terested in ships and shipping for their own sake, 
and can seldom resist the temptation to expand and 
elaborate a nautical simile in the book he is trans- 
lating. The idea of his "long ships," higher than 
the others, may even have been suggested to him 
by his study of the chapter in Orosius where 
Antony's ships are said to have made up in size 
what they lacked in number, since they stood ten 
feet out of the water. ''They were so wrought," 
adds Alfred, "that they could not be overladen 

' Cf. supra, Chapter II., p. 52 ff.; two men to an oar would 
give about sixty men to a ship. 

= VinogradoflE, Eng. Soc. in Xltli Cent., p. 31; Liebermann, 
Gesetze, ii., ii., Schiff. 



The Alfredian State 247 

with men." If the English translation of Boe- 
thius dates from about 897/ it is specially inter- 
esting to note Alfred's addition to the description 
of the Golden Age, when "no man had heard of a 
sciphere" or pirate fleet, and to read in his expan- 
sion of the story of Ulysses and Circe, how Ulysses, 
after losing ninety-nine out of his hundred ships 
in the ten years' siege of Troy, sailed out into the 
"Wendelsea," or Mediterranean, with a single 
three-banked galley, a trireme, or thrireihre scip. 
In the metrical version the Greek ships become 
"beaked keels," and "sea-horses," and Ulysses, 
in his foam-girt trireme, faces the storm-wind 
and the roaring brown waves, as Alfred himself 
may have faced them when he "sailed out on the 
sea with ships" against the Danish men.^ 

If the scantiness of contemporary records and s/ 
the luxuriant growth of later tradition make it 
difficult to trace Alfred's military and naval re- 
forms in detail, this is still more the case with his 
judicial system. Yet the very extravagance of 
his popular reputation is suggestive — the legend- 
ary haze may be only the smoke from the smould- 
ering fires of truth. The King who has been f 
credited with the institution of trial by jury and ': 
judgment by peers, with the division of England 
into shires, hundreds, and tithings, and the first 
issue of original writs, must have won so high a 

' Infra., Chapter IX., p. 325 ff., p. 364. 

= Boethius, XV., p. 34; XXXVIII., § i., p. 115; Met., XXVI., 
pp. 193-194- 



248 Alfred the Truthteller 

place in the imagination of his people by an honest 
zeal for justice, and a determined effort to ensure 
its impartial administration. 

Asser has described King Alfred's judicial work 
in the interesting chapters with which his book 
abruptly closes. ^ After noting the King's pains- 
taking thoroughness in examining judicial cases 
in the interests of the poor, who found in him 
almost their only helper, he explains more fully 
that the ealdormen and reeves {comites et praepositi) 
could not enforce their decisions in the courts, 
owing to the constant quarrels among the litigants, 
noble and non-noble. In consequence of these dif- 
ferences of opinion, both parties to a suit would 
pledge themselves to submit to the King's judg- 
ment, though coercion had to be used to induce 
those who were conscious of a weak cause to ap- 
pear before such a judge. 

The King, indeed, in matters of justice, as in 
all other business, was a most clear-sighted in- 
vestigator. It was his custom to revise almost 
all the judgments which were given in his kingdom, 
when he was not present, and if he found any 
injustice in them, he would gently ask the judges 
(Judices), either in person, or by one of his faith- 
ful ministers, why they had judged so wrongly, 
whether through ignorance or malice, or from 
love or fear or hate of any man, or from greed of 
gain. If they confessed to ignorance, he would 
say: 

' Cc. 105, 106. 




Photo, F. F. & Co. / 
THE ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH, BRADFORD-ON-AVON. (INTERIOR) 



The Alfredian State 249 

I greatly wonder at your presumption in assuming 
the office and rank of witan (sapientes), conferred by 
the gift of God and by my gift, when you have neg- 
lected the study and practice of wisdom. Wherefore 
I command you either straightway to resign your 
public offices, or to apply yourselves much more 
earnestly to the study of wisdom. 

Asser seems here, in his pedantic fashion, to 
show Alfred trying, with characteristic directness, 
to reahse in everyday life that ideal of the just 
king which was one of the favourite themes of 
mediaeval political philosophers.'' Justice, and 
mercy or pity, the two scales of St. Isidore's judi- 
cial balance, were, indeed, recognised as the essen- 
tial virtues of the Christian king, who swore in 
his coronation oath to "ordain equity and mercy 
in all judgments." The picture of the good king 
drawn by Jonas of Orleans in the days of Louis 
the Pious might be the portrait of Alfred, as Asser 
knew him, more than half a century later — the just 
and equitable ruler, the defender of churches, of 
God's servants, of widows and orphans, and of all 
the poor and needy; quick to prevent or suppress 
injustice, ready, as "judge of judges," to hear 
the cause of the poor, and to protect them against 
unjust dealing or oppression at the hands of his 
ministers. 

That Asser' s somewhat grandiloquent account 
is more than a fancy sketch is seen by its close 
agreement with Alfred's Code of Laws, which had 

* Supra, p. 202 ff. 



250 Alfred the Truthteller 

probably been compiled two or three years earlier. 
Thus, in the preface to his laws, Alfred inserted 
the Mosaic warning against taking gifts, "for the 
gift blindeth the wise and perverteth their words," 
and expanded the injunction, "thou shalt not 
wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause," ^ 
into: "Judge righteous and equal judgments; 
judge not one judgment for the rich and another 
for the poor, nor one judgment to friends and 
another to foes." These Hebrew precepts be- 
came approved maxims of later English law, and 
were incorporated in a little vernacular tract on 
the duties of the ideal judge, which was probably 
drawn up towards the close of the tenth century, 
or early in the eleventh century. =" When King 
Alfred asked his ealdormen and reeves if they 
had 'failed in their duty "from love, or fear, or 
hate, or greed," he was simply applying this teach- 
ing to practical purposes, and traces of an ancient 
official oath may even be detected in the formal 
wording of his question. ^ The laws of Alfred and 
Ine, moreover, reflect an administrative system 

'Exodus, xxiii., 6, 8; Deut. xvi., 19. 

^ Judex: Liebermann, Gesetze, i., p. 474. 

3 The actual formula employed by Alfred seems to reappear 
in the oath imposed on the sheriffs in 1258: Ke il fra (fera) 
dreiture (righi) communement a tute gent solum le poer ke il a de 
sun office. E ceo ne lerra Qaissera) pur amur, ne pur hayne, ne 
pur pour (peur) de nul, ne pur nule coveytise, he il ausi hen et ausi 
tost neface hastive dreiture al povere home cume al riche, etc. — Stubbs, 
Select Charters, seventh ed., 1890, p. 398. Cf. Inquest of Sheriffs, 
1 170, ibid., p. 148, and Treaty of Wallingford, Matt. Paris, 1153, 
ibid., p. 118. Cf. Cnut, 1027 (12), Liebermann, Gesetze, i., p. 277. 



The Alfredian State 251 

which is quite in accordance with Asser's state- 
ments. Ealdormen and king's reeves appear as 
active and responsible ministers of royal justice, 
holding "folk-moots," receiving accusations, re- 
straining private feuds, and, in the case 
of ealdormen, at least, liable to forfeit office 
through misconduct,^ unless pardoned by the 
king. 

Ine's dooms seem to have been written down 
with special reference to the needs of ealdormen 
and other officials, and Edward the Elder, in later 
days, referring probably to Alfred's "Code," ex- 
horted all "reeves" to judge such right judgments 
(domas) "as they know to be most righteous, as 
it stands in the "doombook," The reeves were 
evidently expected to be diligent readers of the 
law, and Asser, when he wrote of the ignorant 
judges whom the King drove to study "Saxon 
books," may have actually seen harassed ealdormen 
and their subordinates wrestling with the intrica- 
cies of the newly codified "dooms," 

sighing deeply, and lamenting that they had not ap- 
plied themselves to such studies in youth, thinking 
the young men of that time happy, in that they could 
easily obtain instruction in the liberal arts, but count- 
ing themselves unhappy, since they had neither been 
taught when young, nor were they able, now that 
they were old, to acquire the knowledge which they 
earnestly desired. 

I Ine, 36, I. 



252 Alfred the Truthteller 

Curiously enough, Asser's concluding chapter 
has been regarded both as supporting^ and as 
controverting^ the accredited theory that in the 
Anglo-Saxon law-courts, "the suitors were the 
judges." If decisions on questions of fact were 
obtained by a direct appeal to God through the 
ordeal, or by a solemn process of compurgation, 
the declaration of the custom-law applicable to 
each particular case was the function of the whole 
court. This theory would make the ealdormen 
and reeves mere "presiding magistrates," but the 
laws of the tenth and eleventh centuries hold them 
responsible for unjust judgments, on pain of fine 
and dismissal, 3 and it is probable that even as 
early as the ninth century their personal and of- 
ficial influence was sufficiently strong to endanger 
the even-handed course of justice. 

Perhaps the conditions under which Alfred was 
called on to govern have not been fully taken into 
account in estimating the value of Asser's evi- 
dence. In or about 893, when Asser is supposed 
to have written his book, the codified custom-law 
had been very recently issued, and was both novel 
in arrangement, and difficult to grasp in its varia- 
tions and inconsistencies. Wessex had been dis- 
turbed and shaken out of accustomed grooves by 

' Stubbs, C. H. vol. I., p. 202, note i, § 72, sixth ed., 1903. 

'Stevenson, Asser, p. 342-3; Oman, England before the Norm, 
Conq., p. 473. Asser's judices are comites et praepositi. 

3 References in Liebermann, Geseize, ii., ii., p. 397; Falsches 
Urteil, i., p. 453; Gericht, 19, a; cf. Richter, 



The Alfredian State 253 

the long war, and a new factor had entered into 
the problem of administration, with the incorpora- 
tion of English Mercia and London. There may 
well have been disputes over wergilds and penal- 
ties and titles to land, in which the suitors would 
neither agree among themselves nor accept the 
ruling of the ealdorman, while the ealdorman him- 
self was at a loss for want of expert knowledge. 
In such cases it would only be natural to turn to 
the king for a decision, just as a man needing help 
in the prosecution of an authorised blood-feud 
was bidden by Alfred's laws* to "ride to the eal- 
dorman," and, failing him, to "ride to the king." 
It does not seem necessary to treat the appeal to 
the king which Asser describes, as a formal appeal 
from a lower to a higher court, a much later legal 
conception. 

The doctrine of the equitable jurisdiction of the 
king, on the contrary, may have as one of its roots 
the early attribution of the virtues of justice and 
mercy to the ideal ruler. There can, at least, be 
little doubt that Alfred himself looked on God as 
the supreme judge, the arbiter and lawgiver, on 
the king as his vicegerent, and on the ealdormen 
and reeves as the king's servants and instruments, 
or that he laid stress on the importance of legal 
knowledge as a qualification for judicial office. 

The exhortation to the sapientes or witan to 
make themselves truly wise, which Asser puts into 
his mouth, is quite in harmony with the tone of 

'Alfred, 42, 3. 



254 Alfred the Truthteller 

his laws and writings. The illiterate ealdormen, 
reeves, and thegns, who preferred the "unaccus- 
tomed discipline" of laboriously learning to read 
to the loss of their official positions, were possibly- 
drawn from life. 

It may further be pointed out that most of the 
questions referred to the king would probably be 
now, as later, civil cases concerning the ownership 
or possession of bookland,^ where resort to arbi- 
tration was both easy and usual. This is ad- 
mirably illustrated by an apparently genuine 
document, an anonymous Anglo-Saxon petition or 
letter to the King, which dates from the reign of 
Edward the Elder. ^ The petitioner sets forth how 
Helmstan, his godson, having been convicted of 
theft, a certain ^thelm Higa appeared as a claim- 
ant of his five hides of land at Fonthill in Wiltshire, 
and would have obtained them, had not the peti- 
tioner interceded for Helmstan with King Alfred : 
"God rest his soul." The King referred the case 
to arbitration, and the arbitrators met at Wardour 
in Wiltshire, on the royal demesne. Among them 
were Wihtbord and ^Ifric the hral {rail) thegn,^ 
and Byrhthelm and Wulfhun the Black of Somer- 
ton, and Strica and Ubba, and many more," 
including the petitioner himself. Helmstan's land- 
book or charter was "borne forth," the signatures 

'Liebermann, Gesetze, ii., ii.; Bocland, 9, 23. 
» Birch, Cart. Sax., ii., p. 236, No. 591; Earle, Land Charters. 
p. 162; Kemble, Cod. Dipt., No. 328. 
3 Cf. supra, p. 220; hrasl = garment. 



The Alfredian State 255 

of its witnesses, King Alfred and others, were 
examined, and it was decided that Helmstan 
might prove his claim by means of oath-helpers, 
^thelm Higa, however, would not consent to 
this, so the arbitrators appealed to Alfred in 
person. "We went in to the King, and explained 
how we had decided, and why, and ^thelm him- 
self stood there with us, and the King stood and 
washed his hands at Wardour in the bower. When 
he had done, he asked ^thelm why our decision 
did not seem right to him, and said that for his 
part he could think of nothing better." 

So the King appointed a day for a trial by oath, 
or compurgation, and the petitioner promised to 
be one of Helmstan's oath-helpers, on condition 
of obtaining the reversion of the land in dispute. 
The trial took place; the oath succeeded; Helm- 
stan recovered the land^ and all went well till he 
again yielded to temptation, and stole some oxen. 
Tracked, and caught with a great bramble-scratch 
on his nose, which was taken as evidence of his 
flight, he was convicted, and sentenced to banish- 
ment by King Edward, who had now succeeded his 
father. The petitioner, however, interceded with 
the new King at Chippenham, and the culprit was 
allowed to return, while the petitioner secured his 
reversion. Finally, as the endorsement of the 
document shows, ^thelm Higa gave up his claim 
in the presence of the King and before witnesses 
at Warminster. "How indeed," writes the peti- 
tioner, "can any plea be ended if neither money 



256 Alfred the Truthteller 

nor oath end it, and if every 'doom' which king 
Alfred gave may be set aside?" 

The general impression left by this most in- 
structive letter is of a patriarchal justice, homely, 
simple, and informal. But it should be observed 
that Helmstan's two trials for theft were carried 
out without the king's intervention, though the 
criminal eventually obtained the king's pardon; 
that Alfred was first called in, perhaps as overlord 
rather than as sovereign, to protect the interests 
of Helmstan, one of his own "men," that he re- 
ferred the case to arbitration, only gave his personal 
decision when the arbitration broke down, and 
even then was content to leave the final judg- 
ment to the ordinary method of trial by com- 
purgation. 

Dimly, but with a certain consistency, the out- 
lines of Alfred's judicial organisation thus rise 
from the confusion of the contemporary records. 
The king was already the "fount of justice," as 
lord of his men, sovereign of his subjects, and right- 
ful defender of all the oppressed. His jurisdiction 
was exercised, either directly, in the full national 
assembly and in the royal court in the narrower 
sense, or indirectly, through his delegates in the 
local courts held by ealdormen and reeves. 

In all cases the suitors of the court could declare 
the custom-law if necessary, but considerable dis- 
cretionary powers remained with the president, 
a royal official, while in the central courts the 
suitors were themselves witan, men of good birth 



The Alfredian State 257 

or high position. In Alfred's laws^ the judges 
who award and modify penalties are called "wise 
men" (witan), and "world lords," lay or secular 
lords, as well as doomsmen (domeras). 

The constitution of the local courts seems to 
have been more popular, but here the sources are 
"certain only in uncertainty." That there was a 
"folk-moot" in Alfred's day, presided over by an 
ealdorman, or possibly by a king's reeve, can 
be asserted with confidence, but beyond this it is 
hardly safe to venture, though it is highly probable 
that the folk-moot under the ealdorman was the 
court of the shire, and it is possible that there was 
also a court for a smaller district, meeting more 
frequently, under the king's reeve, and correspond- 
ing to the later hundred court. '' 

It is quite likely that both hundred and shire 
are ancient territorial units. All the West-Saxon 
shires are mentioned in the Alfredian Chronicle 
before the first change of hand in the year 891, 
and it is reasonable to suppose that, whatever their 
origin, they were used in the ninth century as 
administrative units. Some systematic division 
of the country into fiscal areas would early be 
rendered necessary by the collection of the royal 
revenues. 

' Alfred, Pref., i8, 21, 49, 7; Laws, 77. 

' Prof. Chadwick's theory: A.-S. Inst., c. vii., p. 228 ff. Pro- 
fessor Liebermann thinks that in the ninth century the folk-moot 
was the only local court, and makes it the precursor of the later 
hundred court. — Gesetze, ii., ii.; Gericht, 13, pp. 451, 452; cf. 
Hundred, 10, p. 518. 



258 Alfred the Truthteller 

These were drawn in large part from the king's 
demesne land, and from the dues or "farm" levied 
by him on his progresses, supplemented by an 
occasional gafol or tribute. Payments were, no 
doubt, still often made in kind, but the process of 
commutation for money had begun long before 
the time of Alfred. 

Asser gives a circumstantial account of Alfred's 
careful appropriation of his revenues, half to 
secular purposes, half to religious objects. The 
secular fund, he says, was subdivided into three 
sections : the first devoted to the maintenance of the 
warrior thegns who served by turns at court, "ac- 
cording to each man's proper office and dignity,"^ 
the second, to the artificers whom the King col- 
lected from many nations, the third to the stran- 
gers who flocked to his court. The ecclesiastical 
fund was similarly divided into four parts. One 
went to the poor, one to the King's new religious 
houses of Athelney and Shaftesbury, the third to 
his court school, and the fourth to the monas- 
teries of Wessex and Mercia, with contributions to 
those of Wales and Cornwall, "Gaul," Britanny, 
and Northumbria. Alfred is said, also, to have 
sent alms to the patriarch of Jerusalem, and even 
to India, ^ and the Chronicle in several annals' 

' In the Boethius, XXVII., § iv., p, 64, Alfred, expanding the 
Latin original, speaks of the Roman heretogan and domeras 
(judges) and of the treasurers (mathmhirdas) who held the money 
(fioh) which was paid yearly to the soldiers or fyrdmen. 

'Supra, Chapter VI., p. 191 ff. 

3 Sub ann. 883 (Laud MS.), 887, 888, 890; cf. 889. 



The Alfredian State 259 

records the bearing of the alms of "the West- 
Saxons and King Alfred" to Rome. 

Without attaching too much weight to the 
details of the financial scheme set forth by Asser, 
there is no need to doubt that Alfred made a wise 
and businesslike distribution of the royal funds, 
and there is some evidence to show that a regular 
financial system based on the local territorial 
units was in existence before the close of the 
ninth century. The fines due from the lord who 
lin^ed away a dependent from his own shire, with- 
out the ealdorman's witness, were paid to the 
king, half in the shire whence the dependent had 
fled, half in his new shire. ^ There seems there- 
fore to have been a royal financial centre in each 
shire, while the king's reeves had as their par- 
amount duty the financial and economic super- 
vision of the king's estates, the collection of food 
rents, and the provisioning of the royal household. 

Side by side with Alfred's administrative re- 
forms, inspired by the same deep sense of personal 
responsibility and Christian principle, went that 
revival of learning and religion for which the King 
gave thanks to God in his preface to the Pastoral 
Care. When, in that preface, he looked back to 
the happy past of the English people, before the 
Danish ravages, he pictured a strong and virtuous 
king, ruling a Christian community of learned 
and godly clergy and laity. 

This was the Golden Age which he sought to 

» Alfred, 37, 37, i. 



i/ 



26o Alfred the Truthteller 

restore. " I often called to mind," he wrote, "what 
wise men (witan) there were of old among the 
EngHsh {Angel cynn), both of the clerical and of 
the lay estate." First among the instruments or 
"tools" of government he named the "men of 
prayer," gebedmen, oratores. If he urged the lay 
witan to read "Saxon books," he looked to the 
clerical witan to provide a vernacular literature. 
Church and State were, to the political thinkers 
of the ninth century, living parts of one organic 
whole, and in England, at least, their separate 
functions were not, as yet, very clearly differen- 
tiated. ^ 

In his laws Alfred hardly discriminates between 
ecclesiastical and lay assemblies, synods and 
secular councils, or between the bishops and the 
other "distinguished witan ^ Ine's dooms open 
with an injunction to the clergy to observe their 
canonical law, their "right rule," and Ine and 
Alfred alike legislate for ecclesiastical persons, 
places, and seasons, and issue decrees affecting 
baptism, Sunday observance, church taxation, 
and rights of sanctuary. 

To this close connection between Church and 
State may perhaps be attributed the absence of 
records of special ecclesiastical councils or synods 
in Alfred's reign, though this may also be due to 
the general meagreness of the documentary evi- 
dence for the period. Circumstances doubtless 

' Cf. Liebermann, The National Assembly in the A.-S. Period, 
§ 17, p. 13 ff. 



The Alfredian State 261 

contributed to strengthen the royal power over 
the Church. The Danish wars had impoverished 
the West-Saxon prelates and clergy, both regular 
and secular, by the destruction of books and 
treasures, and had thinned their ranks by death 
and exile. Whatever the theory of episcopal 
election may have been, in practice Alfred, prob- 
ably with the approval of the witan, seems to have 
appointed bishops and abbots, and to have looked 
on them as his ministers and officials. He men- 
tions "Plegmund, my archbishop, Asser, my 
bishop, Grimbald, my mass-priest, and John, my 
mass-priest," in the preface to the Pastoral Care, 
and Asser says that the King gave him Exeter with 
all its diocese {parochia). 

There was room, too, for Alfred's personal in- 
tervention in matters of ecclesiastical discipline. 
Viewed from the standpoint of Continental 
Catholicism it may well be that English church- 
manship appeared lax, and English monasticism 
scarcely worthy of the name. 

The English clergy, to judge by the letters of 
Pope John VIII., written during the first ten years 
of Alfred's reign, ^ were careless and worldly- 
minded. They married, wore secular dress, and 
lived as laymen, heedless of their sacred calling. 
At a somewhat later date, Fulco, Hincmar's suc- 
cessor in the archbishopric of Rheims, wrote in 

I To Burhred of Mercia, 874; to the archbishops of Canter- 
bury and York, 873-5; to Ethelred, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
878; Jaff^ Wattenbach, Reg. Pont., i., Nos. 2993, 2995, 3125. 



262 Alfred the Truthteller 

a similar strain, though he did full justice to the 
efforts of King Alfred and Archbishop Plegmund 
to raise the standard of piety and learning. In the 
letter in which he recommends Grimbald to Alfred, 
in reply to the King's application for helpers in 
the work of reform, ' he alludes to the decline of 
the Church in England, due, as Alfred had himself 
explained, to the frequent attacks of the pagans, 
to the lapse of time, the negligence of prelates, 
and the ignorance of the people. Asser, too, says 
that in the course of years the monastic rule had 
come to be neglected in England, and the desire 
for the monastic life had waxed faint, by reason 
of the constant attacks of the Danes by land and 
sea, or from the great wealth of the people, which 
led them to despise the life of the convent. 

The days of the Benedictine revival had not 
yet dawned, and King Alfred's own interests were 
rather educational than monastic, but he founded 
monasteries at Athelney and Shaftesbury, and 
started the scheme for the building of the New 
Minster, at Winchester, which was carried on by 
his son, Edward the Elder 

The Athelney house was always small and poor. 
Its few extant charters are probably spurious. 
The last traces of its buildings were destroyed in 
the eighteenth century. The little church, raised 
on piles, with its four circular apses, of which 
William of Malmesbury writes, has vanished as 
completely as the defences which in Alfred's time 

^ Birch, Cart. Sax., ii., p. 190, No. 555. 



The Alfredian State 263 

guarded the island sanctuary. The site, Asser 
says, was surrounded by a vast marshy fen, and 
by water, so that it could only be approached by 
cauticcE — a word which may possibly signify 
causeways, but which more probably stands for 
caudiccB, canoes, or "dugouts"^; — or by a bridge 
which had been laboriously constructed between 
two forts {arces). 

At the western end of this bridge a very strong 
fort, of admirable workmanship, was built by the 
King's orders. There is nothing in Asser' s account 
to show whether the bridge and forts were built 
in connection with the monastery or earlier, nor 
does he say if the bridge crossed the Parret or 
the Tone. It seems, however, likely that it was 
thrown across the Tone, close to the foot of the 
isle of Athelney, and that the forts protected 
the two banks of the river, and formed part of the 
monastery. It should be remembered that the 
burh of Lyng lay about a mile to the west of Athel- 
ney, and the burh of Langport four or five miles 
to the east, and that Athelney Farm is still ap- 
proached by a causeway from East Lyng, and by 
a bridge over the Tone from Langport. '' 

If the flanks of the isle of Athelney were guarded 
by burhs, Shaftesbury was itself a burh, included 
in the "Burghal Hidage." Here, on a steep hill, 

' Stevenson, Asser, p. 332. The mediaeval Latin caudica 
meant a boat formed from a single hollowed tree-trunk, like an 
Indian "dugout." 

' Cf . supra, Chapter VI. 



264 Alfred the Truthteller 

Alfred planted a religious house for women, and 
set over it as abbess his own daughter Ethelgifu. 
William of Malmesbury states that in his time 
Shaftesbury was only a village, but that it had 
formerly been a town, as was shown by a stone 
preserved in the nuns' chapter-house, which bore 
this inscription: 

In the year of our Lord's Incarnation 880 King 
Alfred built this city, in the eighth year of his reign. 

There was thus an early tradition that Alfred 
founded the hurh as well as the abbey. He is also 
sometimes regarded as the joint founder, with his 
wife Ealhswith, of the " Nimnaminster " at Win- 
chester,^ and he appears to have planned the 
foundation and endowment of the " New Minster," 
and, possibly, to have chosen Grimbald for its 
abbot. 

The early history of Athelney is associated with 
the curious story told by Asser of the attempt to 
murder its first abbot, John the Old-Saxon, priest 
and monk. In default of English monks, the 
community was made up of priests and deacons 
from beyond the sea, chiefly, it would appear, 
West Franks, with a number of foreign children 
who were trained for the religious life in the mon- 
astic school. Asser had even seen a young Danish 
boy among them. The Prankish monks appar- 
ently chafed under the yoke of their Saxon abbot, 
and plotted to slay him. Two of their serving- 

* Supra, Chapter IV., p. 114. 



The Alfredian State 265 

men fell upon him with swords as he prayed in the 
church at night. The abbot, who was not alto- 
gether ignorant of the art of war, resisted manfully, 
crying aloud that his assailants were demons and 
not men, "for he thought that no men could dare 
so greatly." The monks came to the rescue, the 
traitors among them, feigning horror, and the 
would-be murderers, leaving their victim half dead, 
escaped to the marshes, only to be caught and 
put to death with tortures, a fate well-pleasing to 
Asser, who sees in it a sign of God's mercy in not 
permitting so shocking a crime to go unpunished. 

This tale is interesting for the light which it 
throws on the admixture of brutality and super- 
stition with simple devout faith, in ninth-century 
Christianity, but it has won greater celebrity than 
it deserves from the confusion of John the Old- 
Saxon, abbot of Athelney, with John the Scot, 
Johannes Scotus Erigena, the famous Irish scholar 
and philosopher. ^ 

William of Malmesbury repeats the current 
legend that after the death of his patron Charles 
the Bald in 877, John the Scot came to England, 
attracted by King Alfred's munificence, and that 
his pupils stabbed him to death with their metal 
pens (graphii) in the abbey of Malmesbury. The 
question has been further complicated by the sup- 

' R. L. Poole, Illustrations of the Hist, of Mediceval Thought, 
Appendix. Excursus, ii., p. 313 ff.; Stevenson, Asser p. civ., 
p. cxii., note 2, p. 335. He does not appear to have been called 
by the three names, Johannes Scotus Erigena, till the sixteenth 
century. 



266 Alfred the Truthteller 

position that John, the "mass-priest" of the Pas- 
toral Care, who is also mentioned by Asser, is 
identical with both John the Old-Saxon and John 
the Scot. 

The identification of the Scot and the Old- 
Saxon may be rejected without hesitation. There 
is absolutely no justification for connecting Asser's 
account of the unsuccessful attempt on the life 
of the abbot of Athelney with William of Malmes- 
bury's narrative, which he is careful to give as 
hearsay {ut fertur) , of the murder of John the Scot 
by his pupils at Malmesbury. ^ The identifica- 
tion of John the mass-priest with John the Old- 
Saxon of Athelney is more probable, but it also 
rests on an assumption which does not admit of 
proof. ^ Asser certainly seems to regard the two 
as identical, for though he distinguishes the abbot 
as "Old-Saxon by race," he first describes John 
the priest as a man of "quick wit" {acerrimi 
ingenii), and then, in almost the same words, 
writes of John the abbot that he rushed upon his 
assassins with his usual "quickness of wit" {ut 
solito ac semper acris mgenio)J There remains 
the possibility that John the "mass-priest" was 
John the Scot, but Asser does not mention the 

^ This legend may have grown up from the fact that a Sanctus 
Sophista Johannes was buried in Malmesbury Abbey. 

' Mr. Stevenson accepts this identification, Dr. Poole doubts 
it. There is a theory that John the mass-priest was a monk of 
Corvei in Westphalia, whence he passed to Corbie in Picardy 
before coming to England. 

3 Asser, cc. 78, 97. 



The Alfredian State 267 

Scot, while William of Malmesbury, who mentions 
both, does not connect them, and the authentic 
history of John the Scot stops before the death of 
Charles the Bald. The three Johns seem to have 
been first woven into one by that ingenious four- 
teenth- or early fifteenth-century forger, "Ingulf 
of Croyland." ' 

King Alfred's other "mass-priest" and helper, 
Grimbald, whose name is coupled with that of 
John in the preface to the Pastoral Care, was ap- 
parently a monk of the Abbey of St. Bertin in 
Flanders, who was sent over to England, at Alfred's 
request, by Fulco, abbot of St. Bertin and Arch- 
bishop of Rheims. The stories of Alfred's early 
meeting with Grimbald,^ and of the later mission 
of Asser and John the priest to bring him to Eng- 
land, may be dismissed as legends, but there seems 
no reason to doubt the genuineness of the letter in 
which Fulco commends the learned monk to the 
King as a spiritual watch-dog against the devourers 
of souls, sent in return for the "mortal hounds" 
which Alfred had presented to the Archbishop as a 
protection against "visible wolves." 

The date of Grimbald's coming to the English 
court is uncertain. He may have arrived before 
887, at about the same time as Asser himself, but 
if he was the same person who was actively con- 

' Liebermann dates his chronicle about the middle of the 
fourteenth century. Riley puts it about 1414. 

^ Supra, Chapter III., p. 81. These stories come from Gosce- 
lin's untrustworthy eleventh-century life of St. Grimbald. 



268 Alfred the Truthteller 

cerned in the struggle between the Abbey of St. 
Bertin and Baldwin, Count of Flanders, in 892* 
he cannot have settled in England till after that 
year. The point is important, since it affects the 
question of the date of issue of the translation of 
the Pastoral Care, in which Grimbald took part. ^ 

On the whole, if Asser's confused chronology 
be disregarded, the recorded facts fit in very well 
with a date later than 892,^ though they come 
from such untrustworthy sources that they can 
only be accepted with caution. Asser describes 
Grimbald as an excellent singer {cantator), most 
learned in every kind of ecclesiastical discipline 
and in holy Scripture, and adorned with all the 
virtues. He is said to have been the first abbot 
of the New Minster, or Hyde Abbey, and he was 
canonised after his death in 902. He was long 
remembered with reverence both at St. Bertin 
and at Winchester, and his name was used in later 
days to give force to the absurd fables connected 
with the foundation of the University of Oxford. ^ 

In addition to these Prankish scholars, Asser 
names four Mercian "Itmiinaries," whom Alfred 
called to his aid, Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, 
PlegmiHid, who succeeded Ethelred as Archbishop 
of Canterbury in 890, ^thelstan and Werwulf, 
"priests and chaplains." ^thelstan is probably 

' Infra, Chapter IX., p. 347. 

^ Stubbs, W. Malmes. Gesta Regum, R. S., ii., p. xliv ff., accepts 
a date after 892. Cf. Stevenson, Asser, pp. Ixxii., 307 ff. 
3 Injra, Chapter XII. 



The Alfredian State 269 

the priest who is supposed to have carried Alfred's 
alms to Rome and India in 883. He may also 
be identical with the ^thelstan who became 
Bishop of Ramsbury, in 909. Priests called ^thel- 
stan and Werwulf witness charters, several of 
them of very doubtful authenticity, between 898 
and 909, and in 899 Bishop Werferth grants land 
to Werwulf the priest, "for our ancient fellowship, 
and his faithful friendship and obedience." 

Of Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, the trans- 
lator of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, ^ 
more is known. He was consecrated to the see 
of Worcester in 873, and held it till his death in 
915, and his name occurs constantly in Mercian 
land-books and charters, as witness, as donor, and 
as grantee. It must have taken some courage 
to accept a bishopric in Mercia with the Danes 
occupying London, or threatening the kingdom 
from Lindsey. The peace of 873 proved illusory 
in the following year, but though Werferth is said 
to have followed King Burhred into exile, he is 
found signing charters under Ceolwulf in 875, while 
after the peace of 878 he seems to have been on 
excellent terms with Ethelred, "Lord of Mercia," 
and his lady Ethelfiaed. He was present at the 
London conference of 898, =* and in that year Alfred 
granted land at Rotherhithe to him and to Arch- 
bishop Plegmund. He appears to have held a 
position of almost archiepiscopal authority in 

' Infra, Chapter IX., p. 340. 
» Supra, p. 243. 



270 Alfred the Truthteller 

Mercia, and to have played an important part in 
public affairs. King Alfred left him a hundred 
mancuses in his will, and in the contemporary docu- 
ments he is seen receiving land from the cathedral 
of Worcester and granting it out again to his 
kinswoman, disputing over the title to the posses- 
sions of his see, and winning privileges from his 
friends Ethelred and Ethelfiaed when they build 
a hurh at Worcester "for the defence of all the 
folk." He was also, apparently, a friend of Ethel- 
noth, ealdorman of Somerset. His established 
fame hardly needed the additions of the Book of 
Hyde Abbey, which makes him the translator of 
Boethius, or of "Ingulf of Croyland," who states 
that Alfred held St. Neot and "St. Werferth" in 
great veneration. 

Alfred's fourth Mercian adviser was Plegmund, 
Archbishop of Canterbury from 890 to 914. Fulco 
of Rheims wrote to congratulate the English King 
on his choice of so good and devout a primate, and 
to commend the Archbishop himself for his reform- 
ing zeal. Plegmund, indeed, loyally supported 
Alfred in all his projects, and was one of the 
most distinguished of his little band of literary 
churchmen. 

There would appear, on the other hand, to have 
been strained relations between Alfred and Pleg- 
mund's predecessor, Archbishop Ethelred, since 
Pope John VIII. wrote to urge him to stand firm 
as a wall for the house of the Lord, "not only 
against the King, but against all those who wished 



The Alfredian State 271 

to act perversely," and the papal exhortations 
to the young Alfred to follow in the steps of his 
pious ancestors suggest that, as Sir John Spelman 
says, the King's "Life and Ways were not perfectly 
pleasing to the Fathers of Rome." From the 
general tenor of the Pope's letters it may be 
gathered, however, that it was not Alfred's inde- 
pendence of the Holy See, or his absolutism, which 
gave offence, as Spelman thinks, but the general 
secularism and laxity of the English Church, 
especially in relation to the marriage-law. Ethel- 
red, too, may have had private enemies, for John 
VIII. promises not to believe anything he has 
heard against him. Asser, the friend and fellow- 
worker of Plegmund, may best be considered 
apart, in relation to his Life of the King. ^ 

Of Alfred's personal piety no doubt can be en- 
tertained. Asser has recorded his dedication to 
God "of half the service of his mind and body," 
his observance of the canonical hours of worship, 
his reverence for those relics of the saints which he 
always carried about with him, his prayers and 
lavish almsgiving. But even without this testi- 
mony the King's writings would reveal his devout 
nature, and his care for the things of the mind 
and the spirit. It was characteristic of his practi- 
cal bent, and of his own mental activity and desire 
for knowledge, that he should devote an eighth 
of his revenues to the instruction of the yoimg. 
No modem stateman could see more clearly the 

' Infra., Chapter IX. 



272 Alfred the Truthteller 

importance of education in the scheme of govern- 
ment than this ruler of a half -barbarous people. 
His ideal is expressed in the hackneyed but mem- 
orable passage in the preface to the Pastoral Care: 

Let all the free-born youth now in England (Angel- 
cynne) who have the means/ be set to learning, so 
long as they are unfit for other occupations, until in 
the first place they can well read English writing. 
Let those afterwards be taught the Latin tongue who 
are to be educated further, and raised to a higher 
estate. 

The King's attempt to realise this ideal took 
the form of the fotmdation of a court school, 
on the Prankish model, where the royal children 
and the sons of the nobles, with promising boys of 
humble origin, could learn to read and write both 
English and Latin, under competent masters, 
until they were physically strong enough to turn 
from the study of the "liberal arts" to hunting 
and other "human arts" befitting those of noble 
birth. 
/ . Thus on law and justice, on the army and the 
II navy, on the church and the schools. King Alfred 
1 left his mark. It is interesting to ask how far in 
all his administrative experiments he was, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, following the example 
set by the Prankish emperors and kings. ^ 

V ' The word used, speda, may mean either wealth or skill. 

' Gaston Paris (Hist. Poetique de Charlemagne, livre i., c. 
viii., p. 154, of. p. 295) says of Charlemagne: Peu d'annees apres 
sa mart, Alfred le Grand le prenait evidemment pour modele. 



The Alfredian State 273 

In his military organisation, his personal ad- 
ministration of justice, his patronage of scholars, 
and his court school, there are many striking 
parallels with the imperial and West Prankish 
system of government. Alfred himself was, 
throughout his life, in close and friendly relations 
with the Continent. His court was thronged with 
foreigners of all nationalities, "many Franks, 
Frisians, 'Gauls,' pagan Danes, Welsh and Scots, 
and Bretons." Prankish scholars, Frisian sailors, 
Northern explorers, Scots from Ireland, and Asser 
the Welshman were all alike welcome. There 
was no insularity in his outlook. As Asser says, 
he sought without what he could not find within 
his kingdom, and he would naturally turn for 
guidance and inspiration to the great Christian 
Empire of the West. At the same time, his keen 
intellectual curiosity led him far afield in his 
search for information, and Celtic and Scandi- 
navian elements must be taken into account in 
estimating the influences which helped to mould 
the Anglo-Saxon State. 

Continental analogies may also be due rather 
to development on similar lines than to direct 
imitation, and Asser's Life of Alfred is too obvi- 
ously modelled on Prankish biographies to be 
taken as a faithful picture of his policy in all its 
details. 

Yet, were he even less of an original statesman 
than he appears to have been, Alfred would still 
rank among the makers of England. William of 
18 



274 Alfred the Truthteller 

Malmesbiiry went to the root of the matter when, 
in speaking of the fame of Edward the Elder, he 
added: "Yet the chief Glory, in my judgment, 
belongs to his father [Alfred], who prepared the 
way for all this greatness."^ 

' Cf. Spelman, Life of Alfred, ed. Hearne, pp. 92, 93. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE VICTORIES OF PEACE 

II. Alfredian Society 

WITHIN the organised commiinity of the 
West-Saxon State, king and people hved a 
simple country life in local village groups. Land, 
its settlement and tillage, its transference, and 
the uncertainties of title; the recording of bound- 
aries; the alternations of crops and fallow; the 
gathering of the harvest; rights of pasturage; 
hunting and fishing, and the cultivation of waste 
places; — all these things made up the chief daily 
interests of the average ninth-century Englishman, 
in time of peace. His talk was of good and bad 
husbandry, of weather and of stock, of trespass 
and cattle-lifting, of sport and woodcraft, when 
it was not of raids and harrying, and the war- 
hosts of "heathen men." 

A growing proportion of land was held, in the 
second half of the ninth century, by "book," or 
charter, though by the side of the "bookland," 
"folk-land," held under the custom-law by "folk- 
right," without written title, still persisted. The 
advantage of the "book" was that it gave greater 

275 



276 Alfred the Truthteller 

freedom of disposition to the grantee, and careful 
precautions were taken to prevent the abuse of 
this freedom. An elaborate clause in Alfred's 
laws, ^ an early instance of a kind of entail, or 
family settlement, provides that bookland shall 
not be granted away from the kindred of the owner, 
if such alienation is forbidden in the original 
charter. Only in the central court, however, 
with the witness of king and bishop, could the 
injured kinsmen plead their rights, or the land- 
owner maintain his claim to alienate without 
restriction. Alfred himself, in his will, limited 
the succession to his bookland to his male descend- 
ants, his kinsmen on the "weapon side," or 
"spear side," as long as any of them remained 
alive. " 

Bookland was held by great ecclesiastics, reli- 
gious houses, nobles and thegns, lords whose 
estates were worked by dependents, but there 
were also small freemen who cultivated their own 
farms, and a considerable amount of land was 
sublet on lease or "loan." 

The Danish wars worked havoc among the 
titles to landed property. "Books" were lost 
or destroyed, and had to be replaced by fresh 
grants, while landowners were driven from their 
homes, or permanently impoverished. In partic- 

^ Alfred, 41. 

■ But with reservations. He retains his right to grant land, 
and the gifts already made "on the spindle side" are not revoked. 
Cf. infra, Chapter XI. 



Alfredian Society 277 

ular, as might be expected, this seems to have 
been the case in Mercia. King Alfred must have 
seen many changes of ownership when, towards 
the close of his life, he drew a spiritual lesson from 
the land-law of his day, and contrasted the log- 
hut on loan-land of this transitory life with the 
eternal home in the heavenly country. 

Every man [he wrote in his preface to the transla- 
tion of St. Augustine's Soliloquies] desires, when he 
has built a cottage with his lord's help on his lord's 
loan-land, to rest awhile therein, and hunt, and fowl, 
and fish, and provide for himself in divers ways on 
that loan, both by sea and by land, until he can earn 
bookland and eternal inheritance by his lord's grace. 

It is, imfortunately, easier to collect and cata- 
logue the dry bones of legal theory than to clothe 
them with flesh and blood. The social life of the 
ninth century has left peculiarly few traces as 
compared with either earlier or later periods. 
The archceological evidence, though interesting 
and significant as far as it goes, is somewhat meagre 
and inconclusive, for the custom of burying weap- 
ons, personal ornaments, and articles of domestic 
use, in the graves of the honoured dead, had been 
discredited by the triumph of Christianity over 
paganism. Ninth-century literature, too, has lit- 
tle to say of social conditions. The older poetry, 
and Bede's vivid Latin prose, are invaluable for 
their wealth of detail, and their incidental sketches 
of manners and customs. The homilies and saints* 



278 Alfred the Truthteller 

lives of the tenth and eleventh centuries are full 
of intimate touches and personal description. 
But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is eloquent only 
on war, Asser dresses up his facts in bombast till 
there is hardly any nature left in them, and Al- 
fred's strenuous age was more concerned with 
producing saints and heroes than with writing 
about them. The charters, the laws, and the 
King's translations, with his original additions, 
furnish chance suggestions and hints, often diffi- 
cult enough to interpret, but, in the main, we must 
rest content with imperfect knowledge. Still, 
by reading backwards from a near future, and 
forwards from a not far distant past, much may 
be done to reconstitute the years that lie between. 

Though the land was sparsely inhabited, with 
wide stretches of forest and marsh, the population, 
at least in the agricultural districts, was gathered 
into villages, where the log-huts or wattle and 
daub cottages of the peasants clustered irregularly 
about the little wooden church. ^ In the hilly dis- 
tricts and pasture-lands of the west the houses 
were, probably, less concentrated, and in many 
lonely forest glades and waste heaths the work of 
colonisation must still have been going forward. 

Something, perhaps, of this primitive English 
society may be reflected in the pioneer life of our 
modem colonies. The log-cabins of western Can- 

^ In the wooden Anglo-Saxon church at Greenstead, Essex, 
the logs were set upright, side by side. Some of the early churches 
however, were built of stone "in the Roman fashion." 




GREENSTEAD CHURCH, ESSEX, AS IT WAS IN 1748 

From Traill's Social England, Vol. I 

Attributed to nth Century 



Alfredian Society 279 

ada, parted by miles of virgin forest, or grouped 
about a rough-hewn church, the lumber camps, 
the rude waggons, the draught oxen, the wild 
nature around the oases of cultivation, the daily 
contact with the fundamental facts of existence, 
may all have had their prototypes in the political 
infancy of the mother-country. 

The vestiges of that early civilisation have been 
almost effaced from modern England. Even phy- 
sical features have changed: forests have been 
cut down, and marshes have been drained; rivers 
have altered their direction and character; the 
coast-line has shifted with the encroachment or 
receding of the sea. The defences of Anglo-Saxon 
"camps" and the course of Anglo-Saxon roads may 
still, indeed, be traced, but the perishable wooden 
buildings of the Germanic settlers have passed 
away far more completely than the solid Roman 
masonry which they, in large measure, replaced. 

The ordinary Anglo-Saxon house of the ninth 
century probably consisted of a hall or living- 
room, with a "lean-to" or a separate building for 
sleeping, and other penthouses, huts, or sheds, for 
cooking, storage, stabling, and various domestic 
purposes. The hurh of the king's thegn would 
often have, in addition to the principal house, a 
belfry, a kitchen, and a church or private chapel. ^ 
The homesteads of smaller men would be much 
the same in design, though with fewer buildings 

' Cf. the eleventh-century statement of earlier custom. — 
Gethynctho: Liebermann, Gesetze, i., p. 456. 



280 Alfred the Truthteller 

and less pretension. The whole group, the burh, 
ham, or tun, would be enclosed by a low earth- 
work, probably surmounted by a stockade, and 
would look not unlike a large Scandinavian farm 
at the present day, or a western American ranch, 
with its numerous wooden "shacks," houses, 
bams, and stables. Even the ceorl's cottage, his 
"worth" (weorthig) or "town" (/mw),' was guarded 
by a hedge, and he, like his betters, was entitled 
to a fine for edorbryce, breaking though his edor 
or hedge, an offence which corresponded to the 
burhbryce of a thegn or ealdorman. 

In the famous account of the death of Cynewulf 
of Wessex, which is given in the Parker Chronicle 
under the year 755 (757), nhe "bower" or sleeping 
apartment is far enough away from the main 
building for the King to be slain before his thegns, 
who are resting in the hall, can come to his rescue. 
The "bower," too, at Wardour, where Alfred heard 
petitions as he washed his hands, was evidently 
a distinct room, if not an independent structure, 
and it was in his "chamber" (cambra or camera) 
that the King was accustomed to study, and to talk 
and read with Asser. 

An admirable illustration of the composite 
character of a West-Saxon royal ham is found in 
the English translation of St. Augustine's Soli- 
loquies, where, after speaking of the household 
of wisdom, Alfred adds: 

^ Cf. German Zaun, hedge. 

* The year of Cynewulf 's accession. He was killed in 786. 



Alfredian Society 281 

Just so is every king's ham: some are in the bower, 
some in the hall, some on the threshing-floor, some 
in the prison {on carcerne), and yet they all live by 
the favour of one lord, even as all men live under one 
sun.' 

Here the king's ham is seen as a self-sufficing 
unit, a little community in itself, and it is pe- 
cuUarly interesting to observe how this private unit 
has already been adapted to public uses. The 
royal prison is part of the royal palace. In like 
manner, Alfred's laws provide that the man who 
breaks his solemn oath must spend forty nights 
in prison (on carcerne), in the king's tun, and there 
must suffer what the bishop has laid on him as a 
penalty. If he have no means of subsistence of 
his own, his kinsmen must feed him. If he have 
neither kinsmen nor "meat," he must be fed by 
the king's reeve. ^ 

Outside the gates of the royal ham lay the home- 
farm, or demesne, the estate, managed by the 
king's reeve, which produced grain for the "thresh- 
ing-floor." The arable land of the demesne might 
be in a compact block about the hall, or it might 
consist of scattered strips in the open fields of the 
village. In either case it was generally cultivated 
by the forced labour of the peasants, who owed 
tribute (gafol) and work to the king, as to their 
lord. Actual slaves, who were personally unfree, 
not merely economically dependent, would also 

' Sol., bk. i., p. 44. » Alfred, i, 2; i, 3. 



282 Alfred the Truthteller 

form part of the household, and share in the work. 
The ceorls who tilled the demesne would usually 
live in the neighbouring dependent village, where 
their own arable acre or half-acre strips were 
intermixed in the open fields. So closely con- 
nected was the arable land with the open-field 
methods of cultivation, that in Alfred's laws the 
agrum of the book of Exodus is translated "acres" 
{cBceras) . 

The life of the court was reproduced on a smaller 
scale in the hall of ealdorman or thegn. The 
nobles had their own demesne lands and dependent 
villages, scattered up and down the country, their 
own reeves, and their own little circles of servants 
and officials. The laws of Ine allow the migrat- 
ing gesithcundman to take with him his reeve, his 
smith, and his child's nurse. ^ The ceorl had his 
homestead, his "worth" {weorthig) ,"" or "flat" 
{flet)y with its yard or garden, as well as his 
arable strips in the common fields, and his pro- 
portionate share in the meadows, woodland, and 
waste. 

There can be little doubt that, by the end of the 
ninth century, the power of the lord had grown 
apace, so that, in all likelihood, the free village 
community had become rather the exception than 
the rule. Yet fragments of an older social order 
are embedded in Ine's laws, as preserved by Alfred, 

' Ine, 63. 

^ Cf. the Sussex village of Worth, with its famous Anglo-Saxon 
church. 



Alfredian Society 283 

survivals, it may well be, from a time when the 
self-governing village group was normal, and the 
dependent village was exceptional. The careless 
ceorl who left a gap in the fence round his "worth " 
(weorthig) had no compensation for the inroads 
of his neighbours' cattle. The idle ceorls who 
did not finish their share of fencing the common 
grass-land, the "grass tun," or the arable, whereby 
stray animals ate up the growing hay or crops, 
had to make good the damage to their co-partners : 
there is no hint of a lord. So, too, when one ceorl 
borrowed a yoke of oxen from another, it was 
apparently the local community which saw to his 
fulfilment of the conditions of his contract. ^ But 
such survivals of ancient custom were already 
archaic by Alfred's time. The vicissitudes of the 
Danish wars, the forced sales of land, and per- 
sonal submissions, had tended to depress the 
peasantry, and to hasten the development of the 
power of the thegnhood. 

In Alfred's laws and writings, the individualistic 
note, perceptible in Ine's day, is accentuated and 
strengthened. Treason to a lord is the unpardon- 
able sin. A man may not fight for his own kins- 
men against his lord, though when his lord is 
attacked, he must always defend him. The obli- 
gation, however, was not all on one side. If the 
dependent gave service, he received protection. 
The lord fought for his men. The ceorl might 
build his hut on his lord's land, with his help. 

^ Ine, 40, 42, 60. 



284 Alfred the Truthteller 

"Workmen," equally with clergy and warriors, 
were recognised as essential to the well-being of 
the State. 

Asser is, probably, unduly hard on the West- 
Saxon aristocracy when he accuses them of world- 
liness and selfishness, and says that they cared 
more for their own interests than for the common 
good, and that the poor had few or none to help 
them, save only the king. It was for the good of 
the whole community that order should be main- 
tained, and that theft should be put down with a 
high hand. The thegnhood took over the respon- 
sibility for the police of the country, when the 
old system of kindred responsibility weakened 
with the lapse of time and the stress of the Danish 
wars. 

Ine had decreed that the man who left his lord 
without leave, and "stole away" into another 
shire, must return, and pay sixty shillings to his 
lord.^ In Alfred's laws this is elaborated: the 
man who wishes to seek a lord in a new locality^ 
must do it with the witness of the ealdorman whom 
he previously followed in his shire. If he fail 
to obtain this witness, his new lord has to pay a 
fine of a hundred and twenty shillings to the king, 
half in the shire whence he fled, half in the shire 
in which he now lives. If, again, the man had 

» Ine, 39. 

"Alfred, 37. Cf. Liebermann, Gesetze, ii., ii.; Grafschaft, i, b. 
The word used is boldgetcel, which has been taken to mean both 
hundred and shire ; from the context it seems here to be the shire. 



Alfredian Society 285 

done evil in his own home, if he were flying from 
justice, his new lord had to pay the penalty, in 
addition to a fine of a hundred and twenty shillings 
to the king. ^ 

The right of choosing a lord, rather than absolute 
independence, was, then, even in these early days, 
coming to be regarded as the mark of freedom, but 
the restrictions on liberty in this respect were all 
made in the public interest, and the resources of 
the State had increased since Ine's time. The 
administration of the kingdom was at once better 
organised and more elastic, though the official and 
aristocratic element was also more pronounced. 
When Alfred in his will granted liberty to his men 
to choose a lord after his death outside the royal 
house, he could only secure this privilege to them 
by obtaining the confirmation of the ^'witan of 
the West-Saxons." In his translation of St. 
Augustine's Soliloquies, Alfred makes God the 
good lord, in whose righteous household the fugi- 
tive sinner seeks a refuge from the miserable service 
of the devil. ^ The king was the chief of earthly 
lords, and his household was the model of all 
others. 

Asser gives a graphic description of the West- 
Saxon court, thronged with strangers, the King 
himself the centre of a crowd of ministers, for- 
eigners, scholars, ecclesiastics, handicraftsmen, 
huntsmen, and falconers : — questioning, discussing, 
picking the brains of all with whom he came in con- 

» Alfred, 37; 37, i : 37, 2. ' Sol., bk. i., pp. 11-12. 



286 Alfred the Truthteller 

tact, as eager to leam as to teach. Asser describes, 
too, the court-school, which must have been com- 
paratively new in 893, when he wrote, for while 
Ethelwerd, Alfred's youngest son, was a pupil in 
it, Edward and Elfthryth, the second and third 
of the royal children, were brought up by governors 
and nurses, though not without such "liberal 
discipline" as the study of psalms, Saxon books 
and Saxon songs could supply. The nobly born 
boys who were taught with the little Ethelwerd 
were, doubtless, received into the King's house- 
hold to be educated and trained, in accordance 
with mediaeval usage. 

Nor was the more practical side of life neglected. 
If Asser dwells, with a scholar's delight, on Alfred 
the royal student, poring over manuscripts in his 
chamber, he can also praise the royal sportsman, 
skilled in hunting and hawking, an expert in 
falconry and a dog-fancier, with special keepers 
for his falcons (falconarios) , his hawks, {accipi- 
trarios), and his hounds {canicularios) . Field- 
sports, indeed, were more than mere amusements 
when even the king's table was largely dependent 
on wild game for its supplies. Hunting and hawk- 
ing formed a necessary part of a nobleman's educa- 
tion, and Alfred was a trained and skilful hunter, 
"incomparable," says Asser, "in that art, as in 
all other gifts of God, as we have frequently 
seen." 

Alfred, who thought wolf-hounds a suitable pre- 
sent for an archbishop, and in whose laws the 



Alfredian Society 287 

misdeeds of dogs found a place, ' shows a healthy- 
love of sport and natural history in his writings. 
He asks with Wisdom in the Boethius'': "Do you 
then take your nets and your dogs out to sea, 
when you go hunting?" And answers for him- 
self: "I ween that you place them up on the hills 
and in the woods." 

The deer of Ireland and the reindeer of Norway 
interest him, as well as the elephants, lions and 
tigers of his classical studies — with "the beast 
which we call lynx (lox)" of which Aristotle the 
philosopher said that it could see through trees, 
and even stones. He has the quick power of ob- 
servation of a true Nature-lover, and introduces 
country sounds and sights into his translations — 
the startling crash of the forest-tree, falling when 
men least expect it; the swine rushing back from 
clean water to wallow in miry puddles ; the change 
of seasons; the growth of plants and trees; the 
wonders of a starry night; the ebb and flow of 
tides: all have their appeal for him, and are all 
fraught with spiritual meaning. 

One Creator there is without any doubt [he writes, 
adding his own song of praise to the chant of Wisdom]. 
He is the ruler of heaven and earth, and of all crea- 
tures visible and invisible, even God Almighty. . . . 
So now with spring and harvest-tide (autumn); in 
spring things grow; in harvest-tide they wither. 
And again, with summer and winter; in summer it is 
warm, and in winter cold. So also the sun brings 

Alfred, 23; 23, i; 23, 2. ^ Boethius, XXXII., § iii., p. 73. 



288 Alfred the Truthteller 

bright days, and the moon shines at night, by the 
power of the same God/ 

Among the strange Norwegian customs of 
which Ohthere told his lord King Alfred, was the 
habit of ploughing with horses, instead of oxen. 
In England horses were used for transport, not for 
agricultural work, and were of considerable value. 
"Formerly," says one of Alfred's dooms, "^ "the 
gold thief and the stud thief and the bee thief had 
each a punishment . . . now they are all equal," 
and another law gives compensation for the theft 
of the cow and her calf, or the stud-mare and her 
foal. 3 As the mares, the eguce silvestres, ran wild 
in the woods, the temptation to drive them away 
must have been great. But there were "tame 
horses" also, for which the reeve had to build 
stalls in the burh,"^ and the king had a "horse- 
thegn" who seems to have been a person of some 
importance, s There are frequent references to 
riding in the contemporary sources — riding to 
war, to the "moot," or court of justice, or on the 
king's errands, and a horse was esteemed a precious 
gift, worthy of record in a "book" or charter. 

The royal court and the household of the great 

^Boethius, XXI., p. 48 flf. Cf. XXXIII., § v., pp. 81-82; 
XXXIV., §v., p. 86, §x., pp. 91-92; XXXVI., § iii., p. 105; 
XXXVIL, § iv., p. 115; XXXVIIL, §ii., p. 117; XXXIX., § iii., 
p. 126. 

' Alfred, 9, 2. J Ibid., 16, 

^Gerefa, 13. Cf. 11, 15 (a "horse-comb"). (Liebermann, 
Gesetze, i., p. 453 flf.) 

5 Supra., Chapter VII., pp. 220, 228-9. 



Alfredian Society 289 

noble were alike migratory, and the lines of local 
and social cleavage must have been less sharply 
defined when the king was constantly moving 
about among his subjects, and the kingdom was 
governed in much the same way as a large country 
estate. Alfred had demesne lands in Kent and 
Surrey and Sussex, in every county of the older 
Wessex, and even in remote Cornwall.^ He is 
said to have been hunting in Cornwall when he 
turned aside to pray at the shrine of St. Gueriir 
for some alleviation of his chronic infirmity.^ 
The king's stewards, in their double capacity, 
political and economic, would need to be as efficient 
as the "wise reeve" of a later treatise, ^ who had to 
know the lord's land-right, and the folk-right 
which the witan declared from of old, and the 
times of tillage, and all that belonged to the tun^ 
to the very mouse-traps, and the pins of the door- 
hasps: "by town {on tune) and down {on dune), 
by wood and water, by field and fold, within and 
without." 

Like many great administrators, Edng Alfred 
had a passion for detail, and took an active part 
in the small affairs of daily life. Nothing was 
too petty for him; nothing was too trivial for his 
keen interest in human nature and the world of 
men. He loved building, and, besides his fort- 
resses and monasteries, Asser speaks of the cities 

^ Supra., Chapter III., p. 70; Chapter IV,, p. 119. 

'Asser, c. 74. 

^Gersfa (Liebermann, Gesetze, i., p. 453 S.). 



290 Alfred the Truthteller 

and towns which he founded or restored, of the 
"halls and royal chambers" which were con- 
structed of stone and wood by his orders, and of the 
stone-built royal "vills" which were moved at his 
command from their former sites to more con- 
venient positions. 

Asser also makes the curious assertion that 
gold and silver "edifices" {cedificia) were built 
by the King's instructions {illo edocente).^ This 
probably means that some of his houses were 
decorated with gilding and metalwork. Alfred, like 
Beowulf, when he approached the hall"Heorot,"^ 
may have seen his royal "ham" shining from 
afar, "splendid and gold-adorned." There are 
instances of such decoration in ninth-century 
chronicles as well as in both earlier and later 
records. Prankish, English, and Scandinavian. ^ 

In another passage Asser connects building 
with decoration, and seems to hint that Alfred 
had some special knowledge of working in metal, 

' So peculiar is Asser's use of the word csdificia that Mr. Plum- 
mer {Life and Times, pp. 46, 47) understands by it "articles of 
goldsmith's work," — "shrines and reliquaries, which really were 
'edifices' in miniature." Asser may perhaps employ cedificium 
in an unusual and general sense, for things made or built, when 
he speaks of workmen (operaiores) in omni terreno cedificio edoctos, 
but of the four instances (cc. 56, 76, 91, loi) in which the word 
occurs in his book, only one, where cBdificia are given to Guthrum, 
seems to be absolutely incompatible with the ordinary meaning 
of the term, and this may be due to a scribal error. {Supra, 
Chapter VI., p. 179.) Cf. Stevenson, Asser, pp. 329, 330. 

^Beowulf, vv. 306-308; cf. V. 926. 

3 Stevenson, op. ciL, pp. 329-330. 



Alfredian Society 291 

when he describes him as teaching "his goldsmith^v 
and artificers," his falconers and dog-keepers, 
and then adds that he made by his own device 
buildings {cedificia) "more venerable and pre- 
cious" than those of his predecessors.' His 
familiarity with the builder's craft is seen in the 
way in which he introduces it into his parables 
and allegories. Thus in the Boethius"^ he writes:] 

Whoso will have eternal bliss, must fly from the 
dangerous beauty of this world, and build the house 
of his mind on the firm rock of humility, for Christ 
dwelleth in the valley of humility, and in the memory 
of wisdom. 

And again 3 : 

Even as the wall of every house is made fast both 
to the floor and to the roof, so' every good thing is 
made fast to God ; for He is both roof and floor of all 
that is good. 

The original preface to Alfred's translation of 
the Soliloquies of St. Augustine is, in itself, a 
perfect little picture of the building of a tun or 
ham in the ninth century: 

I gathered me then staves, and props, and beams, 
and helves for each of the tools that I could work with, 
and bough timber and bolt timber, and for each of 
the works which I could perform as many of the fair- 

* Asser, c. 76. ' Boethius, XII., p. 27. 

« Ibid., XXXVr., § viii., p. no. 



292 Alfred the Truthteller 

est trees as I could carry away. Nor did I come home 
with a burden, because I did not wish to bring the 
whole wood home, even if I could carry it. In every 
tree I saw something that I needed at home. There- 
fore I exhort every one who is able, and has many 
wains, to wend his way to the same wood where I 
cut the props. Let him then get more, and load his 
wains with fair rods (gerdas, or yards), that he may 
weave many a fine wall, and set up many a goodly 
house, and build a fair tun,^ and dwell therein with 
mirth and ease both in winter and summer, as I never 
yet have done. But He who taught me, and to whom 
the wood was pleasing, may make me dwell more 
easily both in this transitory log-hut by the road, 
while I am in this world, and also in the eternal home 
which He has promised us through St. Augustine 
and St. Gregory and St. Jerome, and through many 
other holy Fathers. 

If the exterior of the "fair house" of the Anglo- 
Saxon king or noble were gay with paint and 
gilding, and sometimes, it may be, rich with 
carving, the interior was no less gorgeous. The 
walls were hung with costly tapestry, and the 
columns which supported the roof were turned, 
carved, or brightly coloured. There were no 
chimneys, it is true, while the windows were un- 
glazed, and the furniture was somewhat scanty — 
a "high seat" for the lord, with benches for the 
lowlier men, trestle tables, and beds in the bur- 

' Here the tun or enclosure seems to contain several wooden 
houses. 



Alfredian Society 293 

cotes or "bowers" for the lord's family and the 
more distinguished guests — but the drinking ves- 
sels were often of gold or silver, and of beautiful 
design and fine workmanship, and though to 
modem ideas the standard of comfort was low, 
the artistic standard was relatively high. Beauty 
of form and colour probably entered more inti- 
mately into the everyday life of the mass of the 
people in ninth-century England than it does at 
the present day. 

At great festivals, public or private, at Christ- 
mas and Easter, at marriages, and after victories, 
or when the short cold winter days made outdoor 
labour and recreation difficult, there would be 
much good fellowship and merrymaking in the 
homes of both rich and poor, feasting and drinking 
in the "mead-hall," music and song, games of 
chance and skill, and contests of wit. Merry- 
making, no doubt, often degenerated into the 
drunkenness which was a constant reproach to 
the Anglo-Saxons, hard drinkers and heavy feed- 
ers from the beginning. Ine legislated for the 
case of a quarrel at a feast, or drinking-bout,^ 
and Alfred wrote severely against excess in dainty 
food and diverse drinks.' His own marriage, 
however, was celebrated by a great concourse of 
people of both sexes, and the festivities were kept 
up "by day and by night." 

The somewhat gross revelry at such gatherings 

» Ine, 6, 5. 

•Boethius, XXXVII., § i., p. in ff. 



294 Alfred the Truthteller 

,^ was redeemed by a love of music which seems to 
have been as intuitive with the Germanic races 
as their love of strong drink. The young noble's 
education was not complete xmtil he knew the 
traditional songs of his coimtry, and could, pre- 
/ sumably, chant them to the harp for the enter- 
tainment of his fellows. The professional bard, 
or scop, was often of high birth. He was received 
with honour and rewarded with rich gifts, whether 
he was permanently attached to the court, or 
wandered at will from hall to hall. Even kings, 
as the legend of Alfred's minstrel visit to the 
Danish camp shows, did not disdain to follow the 
example of David, the psalm-scop and harper. 
Alfred tells the story of Orpheus, in the Boethius, 
in his own words, with evident pleasure in the 
thought of the harping that would cause wild 
beasts to run up and stand as still as if they were 
tame, though men or dogs came near them: "nor 
did any beast feel rage or fear towards another 
for gladness of the music." ^ 

Jugglers and mountebanks, on the other hand, 
were discouraged by the Church, and Alfred faith- 
fully reflected the feeling of his time when he 
wrote of Homer as "the good scop^'"" and trans- 
lated the histriones of St. Gregory's Pastoral Care 
by "evil gleemen."^ 

Alfred's revival of letters appears to have been 
accompanied by a revival in art following on the 

' Boethius, XXXV., § vii., p. loi ff. 

^ Ibid., XLI., § i., p. 141. ^ Past. Care, xliv., pp. 326-7. 



Alfredian Society 295 

destruction worked by the Danish army. Here, 
however, even more than in literature, there was 
a real revival, not so much a new birth as a 
quickening of inherited instincts and aptitudes, 
which had weakened without altogether perishing. 
Recent archeeological research has practically 
established the existence of a native school of 
decorative art in ninth-century England, a school 
strongly affected by Irish and Prankish example, 
but with a distinct individuality and a continuous 
tradition of its own. If the elaborate jewelled 
ornaments found in the graves of the prae-Christian 
period witness to the taste and skill of the heathen 
Germanic settlers, the illuminated manuscripts 
of the seventh and eighth centuries show the 
strength of the influence of the Christian art of 
Celtic Ireland, while the early ninth-century 
• coinage has marked Prankish characteristics. 

Yet Anglo-Saxon art at its best was constructive, 
not merely imitative. It combined these different 
elements in original fashion, and produced work- 
manship alike imaginative in design and delicate 
in execution. Portunately, the evidence, if not 
very full, is highly significant and varied. Gold 
rings, decorated with filigree work, or inlaid with 
niello,^ silver ornaments, engraved with dainty 
and intricate patterns, or moulded into fanciful 
shapes, imply genuine artistic feeling and great 

^ A mixture of silver, lead, copper, and sulphur. It produces 
a black composition, which is very effective when contrasted 
with silver. 



296 Alfred the Truthteller 

technical facility in the English craftsmen of 
Alfred's boyhood. The repetition of the same 
designs in later work points to the persistence of 
the established tradition through the disturbed 
period of the Danish incursions. 

Alfred may have inherited artistic sensibility 
from his parents. He was certainly brought up 
among beautiful things. His mother tempted 
her children to learn to read with an illuminated 
manuscript. His father's gold ring, shaped like a 
mitre, with his name, + Ethelvulf ^ {rex), wrought 
in the fabric, has survived. ^ His sister's ring, too, 
with an Agnus Dei in niello on gold, and + Eathel- 
svith Regina scratched on the inside of the hoop, 
has been preserved. ^ Another gold ring, inscribed 
with the name of Alhstan, probably belonged to the 
warrior Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 867. ' 

The papal historian has recorded the rich stuffs 
and the four silver-gilt gahatce, ■^ the hanging bowls 
used as church lamps, "of Saxon workmanship" 
{gabathe Saxisce)^ which King Ethelwulf carried 

' Found in 1780 at Laverstoke, Wiltshire. Now in the British 
Museum. 

^ In the British Museum. Found about 1870 at Aberford, 
Yorkshire. 

3 Found in 1753 in Carnarvonshire. 

< The fine bowl found at Lullingstone, Kent, may possibly 
have been used for this purpose. (Westwood, Facsimiles of the 
Miniatures and Ornaments of A.-S. and Irish MSS., p. 153. 
Cf. Vict. Co. Hist. Kent, vol. i., p. 378). For gahatcB cf. Diet., 
Christ. Antiq., sub voce. 

* This translation has been disputed, but in view of the con- 
text, it is probably correct. 



Alfredian Society 297 

with him to Rome. Alfred himself mentions the 
"treasures and books" which he had seen in the 
English churches before the Danish ravages. He 
shows perception in classing them together, for 
every manuscript, apart from its literary value, 
was in itself a work of art, and the urgent imagina- 
tion of the ninth century sought expression almost 
indifferently through the pen, the needle, or the 
graver's tool. 

"Treasures and books" had been to the young 
Alfred a stimulus and a delight. They had stirred 
his inventive fancy, satisfied his love of symbolism, 
and deepened his sense of colour and his apprecia- 
tion of grace of line and harmony of proportion. 
When at last he found leisure to carry out his 
literary schemes, it was natural that he should 
also restore the artistic environment of his early 
years, and call goldsmiths and artificers to his 
counsels as well as scholars and clerks. Nor 
must undue stress be laid on the break with the 
past caused by the devastating fury of the vikings. 

In Northumbria, doubtless, the former cultiva- 
tion to a great extent passed away. In Mercia 
there was plundering and burning. But Wessex 
was only in the grip of the heathen army for a 
few months in 878, and the very desolation of the 
northern kingdoms would tend to concentrate 
the scattered talent of the country at the West- 
Saxon court, where all fugitive scholars and artists 
were welcome, and Irish pilgrims, Mercian ec- 
clesiastics, and Prankish monks could meet and 



298 Alfred the Truthteller 

exchange ideas. Asser speaks^ of the numerous 
workmen (operatores) , "gathered from many 
nations" whom Alfred employed, and it is ex- 
pressly said of John the Old-Saxon that he was 
not only "most learned in all discipline of the 
literary art," but also " skilful {artificiosus) in 
many other arts." The blending of Celtic and 
Prankish elements which distinguished the ninth- 
century school of Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship may 
well have been strengthened and emphasised by 
the cosmopolitan character of the Alfredian court- 
circle. 

A little group of objects, differing in purpose 
and origin, but possessing certain common features, 
gives the clue to the distinctive characteristics of 
this English art. It includes a manuscript — the 
Codex Aureus, or Golden Gospels — and several 
specimens of metalwork — a sword-hilt from near 
Wallingford, in Berkshire, a knife from Sitting- 
bourne, in Kent, various small silver articles from 
buried hoards of treasure, the jewel found at 
Minster Lovel in Oxfordshire, and, most note- 
worthy of all, the famous "Alfred Jewel." In all 
these pieces, each admirable in its way, Celtic 
and Prankish suggestions have been developed on 
independent lines. Poliage treated with an at- 
tempt at naturalism, in the manner of the Carolin- 
gian Renaissance, is combined and interwoven 
with animal forms twisted and contorted into 
decorative patterns after the Irish fashion, with 

' C. loi. 



t|M- ^ , 




ESIMlH^bA^JS 









A PAGE OF THE CODEX AUREUS, WITH ANGLO-SAXON INSCRIPTIONS IN THE MARGIN 
From Westwood"s Facsimiles of Min. and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS. 

Plate II 



Alfredian Society 299 

modifications which seem to be peculiarly Anglo- 
Saxon. 

The connection between the ornamentation of 
West-Saxon metalwork and the illuminations of 
the Codex Aureus is of special interest. This 
splendid manuscript contains the Vulgate version 
of the Gospels, written in fine Latin characters, and 
magnificently illuminated with full -page figures 
of the Evangelists. The introduction of Anglo- 
Saxon decorative and pal^eographical details makes 
it probable that it was the work of an English 
artist, and resemblances have been traced between 
it and the Psalter of St. Augustine, a Canterbury 
manuscript of the early eighth century, in which 
Celtic and Latin elements are already blended. 
On the margins of the opening page of St. Mat- 
thew's Gospel the Codex Aureus bears, moreover, 
an inscription in Anglo-Saxon, setting forth how 
"Alfred aldorman" and Werburg his wife bought 
the manuscript with "clean gold" from the 
"heathen army," — "for God's love, and for our 
soul's behoof, and because we would not that these 
holy books should remain longer in hethenesse," — 
and how they presented the costly gift to Christ- 
church, Canterbury. This was the Kentish ealdor- 
man, King Alfred's namesake and contemporary, 
whose will, written in Anglo-Saxon, is still extant. 
His name and the names of his wife Werburg and 
their daughter Alhthryth appear at the side of the 
same page of the Codex, while at the top, in an 
English hand, is a Latin petition to pray for Ceol- 



300 Alfred the Truthteller 

heard the priest, Ealhhun, and Wulfhelm aurifex, 
a goldsmith with an Anglo-Saxon name. 

The Codex Aureus, then, was certainly in Kent in 
the second half of the ninth century, and was seen 
and handled by nobles, clerks, and artificers. This 
enhances the importance of the similarity which has 
been observed between the treatment of zoomor- 
phic motives in its illuminated letters, and the ani- 
mal forms on the metalwork of the same period, 
in particular on the Wallingford sword-hilt. ^ 

The guards of this exquisite piece of work are 
inlaid with silver on a background of niello, in 
delicate patterns, divided into compartments. 
On the upper guard, nearest the pommel, are the 
symbols of the four Evangelists, the man, the 
eagle, the ox, and the lion.^ On the lower guard 
are twisted animal designs akin to the zoomorphic 
illumination in the Codex Aureus, while on both 
guards the foliage is of the naturalistic Carolin- 
gian type. The pommel is ornamented with 
animal heads in relief and a beaded border, and 
a small fragment of gold plate, which doubtless 
once adorned it, recalls "the golden-hilted swords 
{hiltsweordas) " which the king's thegns wore 
when they stood around their royal lord.^ Such 
a noble weapon was, perhaps, the sword worth a 
hundred mancuses which King Alfred bequeathed 

^ In the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 

* This was first pointed out by Mr. E. Thurlow Leeds in The 
Antiquary, Sept., 1910, New Series, vol. vi., p. 348. 
iBoethius, XXXVII., § i., p. in. 




THE WALLINGFORD SWORD SHOWING SYMBOLS OF FOUR EVANGELISTS 
In the Anglo-Saxon Art Collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 



Alfredian Society 301 

to Ethelred of Mercia.'^ Such, too, may have 
been that "Saxon sword," with a golden scabbard, 
with which Alfred is said to have invested his 
little grandson, Athelstan.^ 

If these works of art may, not unfairly, be con- 
nected with the Alfredian revival, others go back 
to the opening years of Alfred's reign, and to still 
earlier days, before the Danish wars. The Sit- 
tingboume knife, which has the maker's name in 
silver, and the owner's name engraved in brass, 
is inlaid with silver and brass, in scroll patterns 
like those on the silver and niello bands and the 
silver strap-tabs discovered near St. Austell in 
Cornwall. These were probably hidden not long 
after 871, since they were found in company 
with a silver cup containing coins, of which only 
two were as late as the year of King Alfred's 
accession. 

The mixture of silver and niello, in these objects, 

' Cf . the beautifully decorated gold plate on the dagger pommel 
found near Windsor, now in the Evans collection, Ashmolean 
Museum, Oxford (V. C. H. Berks., i., plate facing p. 240, fig. 2)* 

' Nearly allied to the Wallingford sword-hilt in style and 
treatment is a silver brooch, inlaid with niello, which is described 
in The Antiquary, July, 1910, N. S., vol. vi., p. 268, in an ar- 
ticle by Sir Charles Robinson, the owner of the brooch. Here, 
again, naturalistic foliage and human figures are combined with 
contorted animal designs and conventional patterns. Here, too, 
affinities with the Codex Aureus may be traced. In the centre 
is a half-length figure holding what appears to be a scourge in 
each hand, which may be compared with the enamelled figure 
in the Alfred Jewel. This brooch, however, has only recently 
attracted attention, and its date and origin are not as yet satis- 
factorily established. 



302 Alfred the Truthteller 

the panelled decoration, the pearled or beaded 
borders, the peculiar zoomorphic ornament, and 
the terminal animal heads in relief, all characterise 
the Anglo-Saxon art of the later ninth century. 
Animal forms of the same description, moreover, 
are inlaid in Ethelswith's ring. A pattern on 
Ethelwulf's ring is repeated on a strap-tab be- 
longing to the northern Cuerdale hoard, which 
seems to have been deposited about 910. Niello 
is used in Ealhstan's ring, and cramped animals 
fill the lozenge-shaped compartments which al- 
ternate with circles to form its hoop. Thus the 
style is carried back to the first half of the ninth 
century, while the connection with the Codex 
Aureus and the Psalter of St. Augustine suggests 
the continuous and gradual development of both 
ecclesiastical and secular art in southern England, 
under the influences, direct or indirect, of the 
Irish, Northumbrian, and Prankish schools. 

From the first, however, the native designers 
seem to have shown a power of original adaptation, 
which was fostered by the stimulating atmosphere 
of Alfred's enlightened court, where the King in 
person directed his goldsmiths, and an ealdorman 
was willing to give great sums to save an illum- 
inated manuscript from desecration. 

Among the many remarkable ninth-century 
specimens of metal work, the skill of the southern 
English craftsmen is, perhaps, seen at its height 
in two enamelled jewels, which may well be as- 
sociated with the West-Saxon revival of art. Of 



Alfredian Society 303 

these, one, found at Minster Lovel in Oxfordshire, ^ 
has a cross in cloisonne enameP on gold, in green 
and opaque white on a blue ground, in a circular 
setting of gold filigree, which slopes outwards from 
the enamel, and is finished by a scalloped border. 
A narrow gold cord surrounds the enamel, and 
between it and the outer border are two bands of 
filigree-work, in a zigzag pattern, filled in with 
raised dots, which crust the surface, and give a 
very rich effect. A hollow projecting socket of 
gold, in which a pin and rivet still remain, show 
that the jewel was originally the head of some 
kind of small rod or staff. 

Of the same character, but far more elaborate 
and beautiful, is the ''Alfred Jewel" which was 
dug up in 1693 in Newton or Petherton Park, 
near Athelney. This jewel has often been de- 
scribed, ^ but it must be seen, for the harmony of 
its colouring and the delicacy of its workmanship 
to be fully appreciated. Though larger than the 
Minster Lovel specimen, it is a little thing, not 
quite two and a half inches in its extreme length, 
an inch and a fifth in width, and about half an 

' Found about i860. Now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 

' In cloisonne enamel, the compartments or cells for the different 
colours are formed of thin gold plates set on edge on the founda- 
tion. In champleve enamel the compartments are scooped out 
of the foundation itself. 

3 It was drawn by Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford. The 
earliest published notice of it is in Philosophical Transactions, 
No. 247, 1698, by Dr. W. Musgrave. There is an account of it, 
with plates, in Hi ekes' Thesaurus. Gram. Anglo-Sax., etc. (1705), 
p. 143. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 



304 Alfred the Truthteller 

inch in thickness. An oval slab of rock-crystal 
protects the enamel ; the edge of it curves outwards 
so that the front, or obverse, of the jewel, is smaller 
than the back, or reverse, which consists of a fiat 
gold plate, engraved with a foliated design, and 
secured by the overlapping, in a succession of 
small triangles, of the border of the filigree frame. 
The central enamel, cloisonne on gold, shows a 
half-length figure, apparently in a sitting posture, 
in a green robe, with touches of red, a foliated 
wand or sceptre in each hand, and a lily-like design 
in gold on either side. The background is blue, 
and the flesh-tints are of an opaque white. The 
drawing is rude, but the colouring is bright and 
pure. The whole is surrounded by a frame of 
exquisite gold filigree. A beading encloses the 
front of the crystal. Around the curving sides 
nms the legend : 

+ ALFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN 

(Alfred bade me be wrought) 

in golden open-work letters, through which the 
crystal can be seen. Two narrow headings, pro- 
ducing a corded effect, separate the legend from 
the solid band of filigree-work which completes 
the setting. This is decorated with a pattern 
resembling the ornamentation of the Minster 
Lovel jewel, but somewhat more complicated — a 
sinuous line of gold filament is broken by foliated 
ornaments, on a grotmd thickly encrusted with 




THE ALFRED JEWEL IN THE ANGLO-SAXON ART COLLEC- 
TION OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD 
Found in i6g3 at Newton Park, Somerset. Presented to the 
Bodleian Library in 1718 by Thomas Palmer of 
Fairfield, Somerset 



Alfredian Society 305 

raised gold dots. The oval of the frame is broader 
at the top, corresponding to the head of the 
enamelled figure. The bottom of the setting is 
prolonged into an animal-head terminal, also 
covered with gold dots, and with gold filaments 
marking the contours of the head. The back of 
the terminal is flattened, and engraved with a 
scale pattern. The open mouth of the monster, 
which has been regarded both as a wild boar and 
as the "dragon of Wessex," holds a pin and rivet 
which prove it to have been the socket of a stem 
or handle, probably of some perishable material, 
wood or ivory, which has rotted away, leaving 
the metal intact. The eye-holes of the animal 
may once have been filled with garnets, crystal, 
or blue glass, as in the case of similar terminals, 
and the empty gold cells at the points of the ears 
look as if they, too, had held vitreous paste or 
crystals. 

It is satisfactory to be able with some confidence 
to reject the theory of the Eastern origin of the 
enamel of the jewel, which was supposed to have 
been brought from Constantinople, and set by an 
English goldsmith. Too little is known of early 
mediaeval enamels to admit of a positive conclusion, 
but whereas the oldest certain examples of Byzan- 
tine enamel date only from the beginning of the 
tenth century,* specimens of Celtic enamelled 
work of a much earlier period can be produced 

' Earle, The Alfred Jewel, App. D., by C. F. Bell, F.S.A., 
Keeper of the Fine Art Department, Ashmolean Museum. 



3o6 Alfred the Truthteller 

both from Britain and from Ireland. The opaque 
white flesh-tints and the translucent green which 
appear on the Alfred Jewel may also indicate a 
Celtic derivation, and the roughness of the enamel- 
work as compared with the finish of the gold 
setting may imply an industry in a primitive 
stage of development. Although, then, nothing 
can be definitely asserted, the evidence favours 
Irish influence and an English source for the 
enamelled figure. ^ 

Another magnificent example of the same school 
is the circular cloisonne enamel brooch set with 
gold filigree and pearls, which was discovered in 
London in 1839.^ This represents a crowned 
head and bust, in blue, green, and opaque white. 
It has been assigned both to the ninth century 
and to a later period, and it is certainly superior 
in drawing and in finish to the Minster Lovel 
specimen, and even to the Alfred Jewel. 

The figure in the Alfred Jewel has always been 
a puzzle to antiquaries. It has been taken for a 
king enthroned, for Alfred himself, for St. Neot 
or St. Cuthbert, the saints connected with his 
legendary history, for the Pope, with the symbols 
of earthly and heavenly authority, and for the 

^ Mr. Bell, op. cit., notes the parallelism between the Alfred 
Jewel and the enamelled medallions affixed to the golden altar 
of St. Ambrose at Milan, which dates from 838. It is not im- 
possible that these may prove to be, like Ethelwulf's gahatcB, of 
about the same period, "of Saxon workmanship." 

* The "Roach Smith" or " Dowgate-hill " ouche or brooch. 
Now in the British Museum. 




THE ROACH SMITH " OUCHE " OR 

BROOCH 

From ArchcBologia, Vol. XXIX, 

Plate ,X, p. 70 




THE MINSTER LOVEL JEWEL (FULL 

SIZE) 

In the Anglo-Saxon Art Collection of the 

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 



Alfredian Society 307 

glorified Christ. It is most probably intended 
to represent the Saviour, in the manner of the 
miniatures in the manuscripts of the seventh and 
eighth centuries. A two-sceptred Christ appears 
in the Irish Book of Kells/ and the St. Luke in 
the Gospels of St. Chad bears a cross in one hand 
and a foliated wand or sceptre in the other. ^ 

An English origin may be still more confidently 
assumed for the gold setting of the Alfred Jewel 
than for its enamel. In conception and execution 
it is thoroughly in keeping with well-authenticated 
examples of late ninth-century Anglo-Saxon work. 
The filigree has parallels, not only in the Minster 
Lovel jewel, but in several late Anglo-Saxon 
brooches. The animal-head terminal is also a 
recognised characteristic of the metalwork of 
the period. Ornaments decorated with these 
heads have been found with coins which enable 
them to be dated with some precision, and it is 
further possible to connect some of them very 
closely with the Alfredian "monster," by the 
recurrence of its curious ears, shaped like "com- 
mas," on the St. Austell silver bands, and on 
other ninth-century relics, including a strap-tab 
from Sevington in Wiltshire, which was buried 
with an engraved silver spoon and fork, and with 
coins ranging from about 806 to 890. In the 

' It has been suggested that the "sceptres" here represent 
the "flabellum," or fan used originally to keep flies from the 
Sacramental bread and wine. 

' The two scourges held by the central figure in the silver 
brooch mentioned above, are of interest in this connection. 



3o8 Alfred the Truthteller 

Alfred Jewel, moreover, the eye-socket is of the 
same character. ^ The striking coincidence in gen- 
eral form between the Alfred Jewel and the earlier 
Irish pins, with pendant, "kite-shaped" heads, and 
animal terminals, is a further sign of Celtic influ- 
ence. * The engraved design on the gold back of 
the jewel apparently represents a tree, convention- 
ally yet freely treated, on a hatched ground, after 
the fashion of the Carolingian manuscripts. 

The survival of these fine products of the Eng- 
lish goldsmith's art gives life to Asser's account of 
Alfred's patronage of goldsmiths and craftsmen, 
and to the king's own rendering, in the Boethius, 
of "the bones of Fabricius" {ossa Fabricii) by 
"the bones of the famous and wise goldsmith 
Weland." "I call him wise," writes the art- 
loving Alfred, in one of his characteristic comments 
on the text, "because the skilled craftsman can 
never lose his craft, and can no more be deprived 
of it than the sun can be moved from his place." 
Then, the legends of his childhood returning to his 
memory, he asks again: "Where now are Weland's 
bones, or who knoweth now where they are?"^ 

^E. Thurlow Leeds, F.S.A., "Notes on Examples of Late 
Anglo-Saxon Metal Work," Annals of ArchcBology and Anthro- 
pology, vol. iv., March, 191 1. The ears on the jewel have "the 
rounded upper end turned outwards instead of inwards," as on 
the other specimens. 

^ E. T. Leeds, op. cit. In this interesting article Mr. Leeds 
calls attention to the hitherto unnoticed affinity between the 
jewel and the Irish pins, and also, for the first time, notes the 
peculiar ears. 

» Boethius, XIX., p. 46. 






Fig 1. FOUR SILVER STRAP-TABS A. B, C. D, IN THE MAYER COLLECTION 




Fig. 3 PART OF THE ORMSIDE CUP ; SHOWING THE LATIN RIM AND 

ONE OF THE CLAMPS 




g^^.r=^wgasar^ifiisaB<B^^^ 



Fig. 5. IRISH PIN : ORNAMENT OF THE POINT 



Fig. 4. IRISH PIN 

WITH KITE-SHAPEO 
HEAD 



SPECIMENS OF IRISH AND ANGLO-SAXON METAL WORK 

From Noles and Examples of Late Anglo-Saxon Metal Work, by E. Thurlow Leeds, B.A., 

F.S.A. By courtesy of the Editor of The Annals of Archaolosy and Anthropology 



Alfredian Society 309 

It was Weland, the magic smith, who forged 
the sword with which Beowulf slew the monster 
Grendel, and as Alfred wrote of his "wisdom," 
he may have thought of such wonderful pieces 
of craftsmanship as the WalHngford sword-hilt, 
or the lovely little gold-panelled dagger-pommel 
which was found near Windsor, not very far from 
the spot where tradition has located "Wayland's 
Smithy" in an ancient dolmen on the Berkshire 
downs. The Anglo-Saxon goldsmith might, in- 
deed, be an armourer, decorating the weapons of 
war, or an ecclesiastic, lavishing his skill on the 
ornamentation of the rich covers of sacred manu- 
scripts, such as Wulfhelm aurifex may possibly 
once have wrought for the Codex Aureus,^ or a 
professional artificer, working to order, like Alfred's 
aurifices. In any case, the nameless maker of 
the Alfred Jewel must have been a master of his 
craft, an inspired artist, with a true creative gift. 

The archaeological and historical evidence for 
placing the production of the Alfred Jewel in the 
Wessex of the late ninth century is so strong that 
it may be allowed to override certain philological 
considerations which seem to indicate either a 
northern source, or an earlier date. These are 
based chiefly on the archaic forms of some of the 
letters in the inscription, notably the square C 
and G, and on the occurrence of the Anglian mec 
and heht in the legend. The square letters prove 

* The jewelled metalwork of the covers of the ancient Lindis- 
fame Gospels were wrought by "Billfrith the anchorite." 



310 Alfred the Truthteller 

little, for they are also found on Alfred's coins, 
and in the Worcester manuscript of the Pastoral 
Care. Heht is both an Anglian and a West-Saxon 
form, which is employed in the prefatory verses 
to the English translation of Gregory's Pastoral 
Care,'^ but the use of the northern mec for me 
is a more serious difficulty, since it is unknown 
to the written and spoken language of Wessex 
in the ninth century. If the jewel is to be re- 
garded as a product of the Alfredian revival, this 
form can only be explained on the supposition that 
the goldsmith either copied a northern model, or 
was an Anglian, working on traditional lines; — 
no improbable contingency, with Mercian and 
Northumbrian refugees flocking into Wessex, and 
artificers of all kinds seeking the patronage of the 
king.^ That very skilful handicraftsmen could 
be quite poor scholars is shown by the blundered 
inscription on a finely worked ring in the Ash- 
molean Museum: Sigeric mea heth gewyrcan 
(Sigeric bade me be wrought). Perhaps the 
Anglian element in the Alfred Jewel may be 
connected with the noticeably Celtic features 
of its form and workmanship, but as yet the mys- 

' This is supposed to be due to the retention of old forms in 
poetry, when they had ceased to be used in prose. 

* The gold and niello ring inscribed : Mthred mec ah Eanred 
mec agrof (^thred owns me, Eanred engraved me), is often 
mentioned in connection with the Alfred Jewel. It has been 
attributed to Ethelred of Wessex, Alfred's brother, but it may, 
with greater probability, have belonged to one of the two Ethel- 
reds who ruled in Northumbria in the eighth century. 



Alfredian Society 311 

tery of its true origin and purpose remains 
impenetrable. 

At the same time, if the attribution of the '. 
jewel to King Alfred cannot be proved, at least ; 
it cannot be disproved. The name Alfred is \ 
not, it is true, followed, as in the rings of Ethel wulf / 
and Ethelswith, by the regal title, and this has 
been taken to imply that the work was executed 
before Alfred's accession in 871, or that it was 
made for some Alfred other than the King. Alfred 
was a fairly common name in Wessex in the second 
half of the ninth century. It was borne, among 
others, by a bishop of Winchester, and by the 
purchaser of the Codex Aureus, the ealdorman of 
Kent. Still, the King was more likely to order 
such a costly masterpiece than any of his subjects 
however wealthy or distinguished, and the fact 
of its discovery on ancient crown land, near Athel- 
ney, is also not without weight. The ascription, 
moreover, is sanctified by use and sentiment, and 
by the unhesitating belief of generations of scholars, 
and until more decisive evidence can be brought 
forward, the beautiful little jewel may be per- 
mitted to retain its time-honoured association 
with King Alfred. 

As to the purpose which the "Alfred Jewel" 
was intended to serve, speculation has been busy 
since the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
without arriving at any entirely satisfactory 
explanation. The connection with Athelney led 
to the idea that it was a personal ornament, or a 



312 Alfred the Truthteller 

symbol of royalty, a relic of the King's exile, an 
amulet, the head of a sceptre, or a jewel worn in 
a crown-encircled helmet.^ A more plausible 
theory was advanced by Dr. Clifford in 1877.^ 
He saw in the jewel the handle of a haculus Can- 
torum, a pointer or book-staff, such as are found 
among the treasures of mediaeval churches. These 
pointers, which were often made of costly mate- 
rials, were sometimes fastened into the binding 
of ecclesiastical books, and Dr. Clifford further 
suggested that the Anglo-Saxon csstel, which is 
glossed stylus in the eleventh century, was such a 
book-staff, and that the jewel is the remnant of 
one of those cBstels worth fifty mancuses which 
Alfred sent to his bishops, with copies of the 
English translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care J 
He pictures John the Old- Saxon, one of the col- 
laborators in the translation, receiving a "presen- 
tation copy," as abbot of the new foundation of 
Athelney, and it would be pleasant to think that 
the skilful artist, "John, priest and monk," had 
a hand in the decoration of the cBstel, as well as 
in the translation of the text. But this identi- 
fication with a particular book-staff is too fanciful 
to be admitted, though it is quite possible both 

^ Professor Earle's theory. 

» Bishop of CHfton (Roman Catholic), 1 857-1 888. 

3 This was first suggested by Dr. Wise, the eighteenth-century 
editor of Asser. Dr. Pegge, the antiquary, also wrote: "If one 
should say it was one of those styli which the king sent along with 
his translation of Gregory's Pastoral, it would be no great absurd- 
ity." — Archaologia, ii., p. 68 ff., 1773. 



Alfredian Society 313 

that (BStels were pointers, and that the Alfred Jewel 
and the Minster Lovel jewel were the handles of 
such pointers. 

Alfred may even have been influenced in the 
devising of his cestel by the remembrance of the 
shrine which his father Ethelwulf gave to Malmes- 
bury Abbey, to hold the bones of St. Aldhelm. 
It had, according to William of Malmesbury, ^ 
a crystal cover, on which the King's name might 
be read in letters of gold. On the front were 
figures in solid silver, and on the back were repre- 
sentations of St. Aldhelm's miracles, in what ap- 
pears to have been some kind of repousse work 
{levato metallo).^ Thus the jewel, with its min- 
gling of Irish, Anglian, and southern characteristics, 
may be the fine flower of an artistic revival which 
had its roots deep in the past, and its fruits in 
the immediate future. 

Alfred, like his father, had a great reverence 
for the saints, and prayed daily before the relics 
which he always carried about with him. It is 
in relation to these relics that Asser gives a long 
account of the King's practical skill and "wisdom," 
in designing a horn lantern. ^ Anxious to devote 

^ Gesta Pont., ed. Hamilton, Rolls Series, pp. 389-90. 

* Cf. Plummer, op. ciL, p. 47. He seems to regard the jewel 
as one of Alfred's cedificia. He suggests that metallo levato may 
mean champleve enamel. But elsewhere the miracles are said 
to have been represented "with golden plating" {laminis auratis), 
that is, in silver-gilt work. Gest. Pont., lib. v., p. 389, note 5, 
from Life of St. Aldhelm, by Faricius. 

sCc. 103, 104. 



314 Alfred the Truthteller 

half his time to the service of God, he found it 
difficult to measure the hours in the sunless days 
of rain and cloud, and the dark nights. He there- 
fore caused wax candles to be made, each twelve 
inches long, of the weight of twelve pennies, and 
calculated to bum for four hours before the relics 
of the saints. In this way six candles exactly 
marked the twenty -four hours of a day and night. 
He soon found, however, that it was necessary, 
if they were to burn evenly, to shield them from 
the draughts which blew through the doors and 
windows, and the chinks in the masonry of 
churches, through the cracks in walls, and the slits 
in tents — a lively, though unconscious, comment- 
ary on the inconveniences of Alfred's shifting 
quarters. He devised, then, a lantern of wood 
and horn, with a door. In this the candles, re- 
newed every four hours, were placed, and, shielded 
from the wind, burnt steadily, and gave a fairly 
accurate measure of time. 

Asser's enthusiasm over this simple contrivance, 
with the space which he allots to it in his book, 
may imply that it was a new thing, ^ at least in 
this particular form. It is typical of much in 
Alfred's history that where important matters 
have been forgotten, this homely instance of his 
mechanical ingenuity should be remembered. 

' Cf. Stevenson, Asser, p. 338 flf. William of Malmesbury 
{Gesta Regum, R. S., i., p. 133) turns the six candles into one 
large taper "of twenty-four parts," a version of Asser's story 
which has passed into many modem histories. 



Alfredian Society 315 

At a period when the general standard of artistic 
production was so high, it is rather surprising to 
find the coinage comparatively poor in design and 
execution, distinctly inferior to the eighth-century 
issues of Offa of Mercia, which were influenced by 
the Carolingian Renaissance, and the Prankish 
reform of the currency. Though this does not of 
necessity imply a decline in prosperity, the shock 
given to English commerce by the Danish inva- 
sions may be inferred from its revival and expan- 
sion after the peace of 878, when large quantities 
of coins were issued, and trade regulations were 
inserted in the West-Saxon laws. If, indeed, the 
viking raids checked commercial development 
in England, the viking settlements stimulated it, 
for the Northmen were keen traders and merchants. 

The West-Saxons do not appear to have had 
a coinage till late in the reign of Egbert, Alfred's 
grandfather, who seems to have been the first 
independent West-Saxon King to coin money at 
the ancient Kentish mint of Canterbury. Ethel- 
wulf and his three elder sons followed the example 
thus set. It was reserved for Alfred to adapt the 
old machinery to new conditions, and to organise 
not only the internal and Continental trade of his 
kingdom, but also the commercial relations between 
Wessex and the Danelaw. 

Picturesque sidelights are thrown by Alfred's 
laws on the industrial side of West- Saxon life. 
Merchants or "chapmen" (ciepemen) are bidden 
to bring the men whom they wish to "lead up 



31 6 Alfred the Truthteller 

country" before the king's reeve in the folk-moot, 
to state their numbers, and to hold themselves 
responsible for their good behaviour. ^ If, on the 
road, they find it necessary to engage more 
followers, they are to notify the fact to the king's 
reeve, with the witness of the "moot." 

Ine's earlier decrees are also retained: the 
merchant who buys "up country" must have 
witnesses, though if he is caught in the possession 
of stolen goods, he is somewhat lightly fined, and 
if he can prove that he acquired the goods in 
ignorance, he goes scot-free.^ Under the brief 
businesslike phrases, may be divined the small 
beginnings of great movements, the internal traffic 
in cattle and agricultural products, the import 
trade in silks and spices, in precious metals and 
jewels, of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The 
travelling merchant, with his train of men and 
waggons or pack-horses, wanders "up country" 
from town or port, eagerly welcomed in hall and 
village and outlying farmstead. There is chaffer- 
ing and bargaining as the goods change hands, 
sometimes paid for in kind, sometimes with 
Alfred's silver pennies, coined at one of the great 
trade centres, the towns on the highways of com- 
merce, to which, his rounds ended, the merchant 
would return, to replenish his empty bales. 

The West-Saxon courts and reeves might be 
trusted to look after local trading interests, but 
with the formation of the Danelaw a new factor 

' Supra., Chapter VII.; Alfred, 34. » Ine, 25; 25, i. 



Alfredian Society 317 

had entered into commercial intercourse, which 
could only be dealt with by the central authority. 
When Alfred acquired London, he made pro- 
vision, in his treaty with Guthrum-Athelstan, for 
trade in "cattle and goods," between the Danes 
of East Anglia and his own subjects. Hostages 
were to be given by the trader, Danish or English, 
who crossed the border into alien territory, as 
pledges of peace, and a proof of honourable 
intentions. 

In connection with the Danish settlers, too, came 
in new measures of value, the Scandinavian half- 
mark of gold'' side by side with the West-Saxon 
shilling* and mancus.^ These were all, at this 
time, used as units of account, representing weights 
of gold or silver. The only actual coins issued by 
Alfred were silver pennies, and the halfpennies 
which he seems to have originated.'* These coins 
were struck at seven or eight mints: the ancient 
Roman cities of Canterbury and Winchester, the 
*' head burhs," ecclesiastical and civil, of the West- 
Saxon kingdom; Exeter, Bath, and Gloucester for 
the newly settled west country; Oxford, on the 
Mercian border; London, commanding the river 
highway of the Thames, where Healfdene had 
coined before; and, unless the monogram on the 
pennies bearing this mint-mark has been misread, 

^ This may have been worth about £3.2.6 of our money, but 
the equation is uncertain. Cf. Chadwick, A.-S. Inst., c. i. 
' Probably at this time worth sd. 
3 Probably worth 2/6, or thirty pence. 
* They were silver coins, similar to the pennies, but smaller. 



31 8 Alfred the Truthteller 

the northern town of Lincoln, in the next reign 
a stronghold of Danish power. 

The archbishops of Canterbury had also the 
right of coining money, and a curious series of 
silver pennies was issued in East Anglia, in honour 
of St. Edmund, without a mint-mark, but bearing 
the saint's name and the names of many moneyers, 
some of them of unquestionably foreign stock, 
Scandinavian or Prankish. Independently of 
these, Guthrum-Athelstan struck coins in East 
Anglia, copied from one of the Alfredian types. 
He, too, employed moneyers with foreign names, 
many of them, apparently, Franks. The names 
of more than a hundred moneyers appear on the 
various coins which bear the superscription of 
King Alfred, but it is practically certain that a 
large number of these were Anglo- Danish imita- 
tions of Alfred's coins, not really issued by his 
authority. ^ 

Among Alfred's genuine coins, twenty- three 
types have been distinguished,^ of which thirteen 
fall within the period before 878, and the remaining 
ten, including the great majority of extant speci- 
mens, belong to the latter years of the reign, after 
the first peace with Guthrum. The earlier types 
are copied from coins of King Ethelred of Wessex, 
of Archbishop Ethelred of Canterbury, and, in 

' Keary, Brit. Mus. Cat. of English Coins, A.-S; Series, ii., 
p. xxxiii. ff, 

* Of these, type XII., with a monogram which has been read 
Roiseng, is probably from the Winchester mint. — York Powell, 
Eng. Hist. Rev., xi., p. 759, Oct., 1896. 




/ 





COINS 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon 

Coins in the British Museum. Vol. II, 

Plate V, Nos. 3, 8, 11 

Types vi, ix, xix 

Two monogram pennies {Londonia) and an 

Oxford penny 






COINS 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon 

Coins in the British Museum. Vol. II, 

Plate IV, Nos. 7, 8, 13 

Types xxiii, xiii, xx 

A Bath halfpenny, a Canterbury St. 

Edmund penny, and a Gloucester 

penny 



Alfredian Society 319 

one case, from a curious penny apparently struck 
by Healfdene, the viking leader, during his brief 
occupation of London after the peace of 871.^ 
This type, which was also imitated by Ceolwulf 
II., the puppet king of Mercia, has a monogram 
of London on the reverse. Healfdene, then, work- 
ing from Continental models, probably inaugurated 
the monogram coinage, to which several of Alfred's 
types conform. They have the mint name in 
monogram form on the reverse, while in other 
types the reverses bear the mint name, the money- 
er's name, crosses and ornaments. The obverses of 
the various issues have the mint name, or, more 
frequently, a cross or a rude bust of the King, with 
his name and title. Canterbury, as might be 
expected, appears to have been the most prolific 
mint. Next to it come Oxford and London. The 
title Rex Saxonum on the rare Winchester and 
Exeter coins links the later coinage of Alfred to 
the first issues of his son and successor, Edward 
the Elder. 

That the West-Saxon coinage was far from pure 
is evident from the care taken to specify that 
important payments shall be made in unalloyed 
metal. Thus Alfred's laws mention the "five 
pounds of pure pennies" which constitute the 
fine for breaking the king's horh or protection, ^ 
and the noble's wergild is fixed in Alfred's treaty 
with Guthrum, for Englishman and Dane alike, 
at eight half -marks of refined gold, "cooked gold," 

' Cf. supra, Chapter V., p. 140. =■ Alfred, 3. 



320 Alfred the Truthteller 

that had been tried by fire. ^ In the Boethius, too, 
Alfred compares the union of many forms of good- 
ness in the Highest Good, to the melting of metal 
into an ingot, and speaks of the cleansing and 
refining of men by the heavenly fire as like the 
refining of silver.^ Already, then, some system 
of "blanching" or assaying gold and silver had 
been established. Already the foundations were 
laid for the elaborate organisation of the later 
Exchequer. Rustic still, and simple, primitive 
even to barbarism, Alfred's England yet held 
within it a mighty force of life, the youthful 
promise of a splendid maturity. 

' Alf.-Guth., 2. To VIII healf-mearcum asodenes goldes 
(cocti auri). 

=" Boethius, c. XXXIV., § ix., p. 90; c. XXXVIII., § iv., p. 120. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE VICTORIES OF PEACE 

///. Alfredian Literature 

IN literature as in politics, in the life of thought 
as in the life of action, King Alfred stands at 
the opening of a new era in the development of 
England. The keynote of that era he himself 
unwittingly struck when he wrote in the preface 
to the translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care: 

Formerly . . . foreigners sought wisdom and learn- 
ing in this land . . . now we should have to get them 
from abroad if we would have them. 

The earlier English literature, Latin, Anglian, 
and Saxon, had been native to the soil, monastic 
and ecclesiastical in form, yet popular and spon- 
taneous in spirit, the outcome of an enthusiastic 
acceptance of the Christian faith. Csedmon and 
Bede, Aldhelm and Cynewulf, though they drew 
their ultimate inspiration from Rome and the 
East, were the immediate fruits of English Christ- 
ianity. The later literature was more exotic in 
character. It was the result of a deliberate policy, 
a royal boon, given to the people with a didactic 

21 321 



322 Alfred the Truthteller 

intention. If the English Alcuin had carried to 
the court of Charles the Great something of the 
learning of the monastic schools of Northumbria, 
Prankish culture reacted on England in the ninth 
century, when the court schools of the Carolingian 
emperors served, in all probability, as models for 
the educational system of the West-Saxon kings. 

It is only in relation to Alfred's political theory 
as a whole that his literary work can be fully 
appreciated. Seen in isolation, it appears some- 
what crude and disjointed, but as a part of a 
system of education which was itself part of a 
wider scheme of government, it becomes both 
intelligible and admirable. 

Alfred was no cloistered scholar, studying for 
the pure joy of learning, but a student and teacher, 
with an eminently practical aim. There is con- 
scious utilitarian purpose behind all his writings. 
They are designed for the education and training 
of the citizens of a Christian State. His transla- 
tions from the Latin of Gregory the Great, Orosius, 
Bede, and Boethius popularised the books which 
seemed to him most needful for every man to 
know, famous books on theology, ancient and 
modern history and geography, and philosophy. 
By his English work in the Chronicle and the 
Laws he preserved all that was best and most 
stimulating in the annals, the customs, and the 
beliefs of the past, all that was most worthy of 
record in the political and social experiences of 
the present. 



Alfredian Literature 323 

He recognised the value of "men of prayer" 
as instruments of government, and he deliberately 
set himself to raise up a succession of learned and 
godly men in Church and State, by educating the 
clergy and fitting them to become in turn the 
teachers of the laity, and by diffusing sound and 
useful knowledge in the vulgar tongue among 
free men of every rank. In the decline of learn- 
ing in Wessex, the King called scholars to his help 
from far and wide, the four Mercians, Werferth, 
Bishop of Worcester, Plegmund, afterwards Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, and the priests ^thelstan 
and Werwulf , Grimbald the Frank, John the Old- 
Saxon, and Asser the Welshman. He heaped re- 
wards and preferment on these men, and kept 
one or other of them in constant attendance on 
him, to read and interpret the Latin books which 
he could not as yet translate for himself. Even 
Asser's turgid rhetoric cannot altogether hide the 
artless simplicity of Alfred's zeal for knowledge, 
a zeal akin to the ardour of the early Renaissance 
scholars of the sixteenth century, or of the nine- 
teenth-century pioneers of the movements for the 
higher education of women and of working-men. 
The King seized every moment of the rare leisure 
of his busy manhood to gratify the long-suppressed 
desire for learning of his childish years. 

One day, when he and Asser were talking and 
reading together, Alfred drew from his bosom a lit- 
tle Book of Hours, psalms and prayers, and asked 
to have a passage which had struck him copied 



324 Alfred the Truthteller 

into it. Failing to find space, Asser fetched a 
clean quire of parchment and started a new voliime 
of translated extracts. Thus arose the Enchei- 
ridion, Manual, or Handbook, so-called because 
Alfred had it at hand "by day and night," a col- 
lection of flowers of thought (flosculos), culled 
from the Bible and the great masters of literature, 
which grew to be almost as large as a psalter. 
It seems to have been known in the twelfth century 
both to Florence of Worcester, who calls it Dicta 
regis Mljredi, and to William of Malmesbury, 
and from it came the pretty tale of St. Aldhelm 
winning the half-civilised West-Saxons to listen 
to his teaching by singing to them in their native 
tongue on the bridge at Malmesbury, a story 
which would please the King who loved the fable 
of Orpheus, and was himself engaged in a gallant 
struggle with the forces of ignorance and barbarism. 

If, as Asser states, the Handbook was begun in 
887, Alfred's definite scheme of translation would 
be started shortly after the second peace with 
Guthrum-Athelstan, when five peaceful years lay 
before him. To this period most authorities 
agree in attributing the Laws, the first section of 
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle up to 892, and Asser's 
Life of the King, which was apparently written 
about 893. 

On the question of the time and order of pro- 
duction of the four great translations, the Pastoral 
Care, the Orosius, the Bede, and the Boethius, opin- 
ion is more widely divided. In the absence of 



Alfredian Literature 325 

evidence, conjecture and imagination have been 
busy, and each of Alfred's works has become the 
centre of a circle of controversy. It is, at least, 
safe to assume that the renewal of the Danish 
invasions in 892, with the . war, pestilence, and 
murrain that clouded the following years, would 
leave little leisure or energy for literary interests, 
and that the translations were probably completed 
either before 893, or after 896. 

Since Asser, who wrote his Life of Alfred about 
893, and himself took part in the English version 
of the Pastoral Care, only mentions the Handbook 
and Werferth's rendering of St. Gregory's Dia- 
logues, some critics would place all the books which 
are directly due to the King in the last few years 
of his life. Others, again, think with Professor 
Wiilker that the Pastoral Care, the Bede, and the 
Orosius followed each other in quick succession 
between 889 and 893, while the Boethius, the 
Soliloquies of St. Augustine, or "Blooms," and 
perhaps the translation of the Psalms, were written 
in the years between 897 and 901. 

The first theory seems to compress Alfred's 
literary activity into an unduly short space of 
time, more especially if 899 or 900 rather than 
901 be taken as the year of the King's death. The 
second theory leaves unexplained the silence of 
Asser on the subject of Alfred's original work, 
a silence possibly due to the obviously imperfect 
and unrevised form of Asser's biography, which 
may have been written at different periods. It 



326 Alfred the Truthteller 

should always, moreover, be remembered that 
Alfred's method of composition was slow and 
careful, and that each book was the fruit of a long 
process of thought and preparation, which may 
have been spread over several years. 

In the preface to the Pastoral Care the King 
himself describes how he turned the Latin into 
English, "sometimes word for word, sometimes 
sense for sense," as he learned it from Plegmund 
and Asser, Grimbald and John, and how he began 
his task "amid the various and manifold troubles 
of this kingdom." Even if none of the four 
translations appeared in its final shape before 
896, it does not follow that they were not begun 
earlier, and brought to perfection in the face of 
almost insuperable difficulties and hindrances. 
In any case, the Pastoral Care, the Orosius, and the 
Bede belong in the order of thought to Alfred's 
earlier literary period, and, as far as subject- 
matter is concerned, his works fall naturally into 
two groups, the one practical, the other more 
speculative in character. Law, history, and pas- 
toral theology may well have occupied the laborious 
days of educational and administrative organisa- 
tion, while the study of philosophy, the "heaven- 
bom Wisdom," of Boethius and St. Augustine, 
would fill that brief time of "stillness" which 
crowned the strenuous reign with peace. 

The Laws of Alfred the Great deserve a place 
among his literary works, both because they are 
intimately connected with his general educational 



Alfredian Literature 327 

policy, and because they bear the clear stamp of 
his mind and thought, in the original preface, in 
the passages translated from the Bible, and in the 
whole sequence and arrangement of the material. 

William of Malmesbury's rhetorical statement 
that the King issued laws "amid the blast of trum- 
pets and the clash of arms" need not be taken 
literally. Alfred's "dooms" were evidently de- 
signed for the government of the country in time 
of peace, and were drawn up, as the preface shows, 
with care and deliberation, after consultation with 
expert advisers. They may have preceded the 
completion of the first section of the Chronicle, in 
or about 892 . Their latest editor. Professor Lieber- 
mann, dates them tentatively "after 890." Dr. 
Turk, who has made them his peculiar study, 
places them in 890, but thinks that they followed 
the translation of the Pastoral Care.^ It seems 
probable, at least, that they ought to be assigned 
to' the opening years of Alfred's literary career, 
and that they form part of that constructive policy 
which he elaborated in the first peaceful interval 
of his reign. 

The Code has been preserved in several manu- 
scripts, of which none are earlier than the tenth 
century. The most ancient, which was probably 
copied straight from an Alfredian original, is now 
bound up with the famous Parker manuscript 
of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and, like it, seems 
to have come from Winchester. It is in the West- 

' The Legal Code of Mfred the Great, M. H. Turk, 1893. 



328 Alfred the Truthteller 

Saxon dialect, and is supposed to have been written 
about the middle of the tenth century. 

The first part, or historical introduction,^ re- 
calls Asser's statement that the King began to 
study "the rudiments of Holy Scripture" on St. 
Martin's Day, 887. The passages from the Bible 
are rendered into English with an ease and vigour 
which imply a practised hand. These passages 
are taken from the Vulgate, St. Jerome's Latin 
translation of the Bible, and it is possible that 
some of them may have been copied into Alfred's 
Handbook before they were incorporated with his 
dooms. 

In the Decalogue, the second and parts of the 
fourth and tenth commandments are omitted, 
in accordance with current ecclesiastical usage, but 
a tenth commandment is added from the book of 
Exodus^: "Ye shall not make with me gods of sil- 
ver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold." 
In the ninth commandment, now the second, 
"God wrought heaven and earth" is turned into 
"Christ wrought heaven and earth," while in the 
fifth commandment, "Honour thy father and 
mother, that thy days may be long in the land 
which the Lord thy God hath given thee," the 
last clause is transposed and made to refer to the 
parents "whom the Lord gave thee," instead of 
to the land, a grammatical mistake of a pleasant 
suggestiveness, for Alfred had good cause to thank 
God for the gift of his mother Osburh, and Ethel- 

' Supra, Chapter VII. « Exodus, c. xx., v. 23. 



Alfredian Literature 329 

wulf , whatever his failings, had been a tender and 
indulgent father to his youngest son. 

In the extracts from the Mosaic law, the book 
of Exodus is followed somewhat freely from the 
twenty-first chapter to the thirteenth verse of the 
twenty-third chapter. The adaptations which 
the King deemed suitable, if slight, are significant. 
Explanations are given, to bring Hebrew custom 
into harmony with Germanic ideas. The "He- 
brew slave (servus)" becomes the "Christian 
theow." The place to which an involuntary man- 
slayer may fly for sanctuary is, like the cities of 
refuge in the translation of the Pastoral Care,^ a 
frithstowe, a place of peace, and the manslaughter 
may be atoned for according to "folk-right." 
The owner of an ox which has killed a man or 
woman is to be put to death or to pay a money 
penalty as the witan find right. For the offering 
of the first-born son are substituted "the first 
fruits of all that go and grow." "Thou shalt not 
wrest the judgment of the poor in his cause," is 
expanded into: "Judge righteous and equal judg- 
ments: judge not one judgment for the rich and 
another for the poor, nor one judgment to friends 
and another to foes." 

More striking than any of these changes is the 
fact itself that Alfred could accept, and work into 
his Code with so little alteration, the laws that had 
been designed for the guidance of an Oriental 
people more than two thousand years earlier. 

^Past. Care, XXI., pp. 166-7. 



330 Alfred the Truthteller 

Like the Puritans of the seventeenth century, he 
identified the English with the children of the 
promise, and took over without question the Mo- 
saic law as applicable to ninth-century Wessex, 
This was, perhaps, less strange for Alfred than for 
the Puritans. He too, like Moses, had to give 
laws to a tribal society, based on slavery, mono- 
theistic, respecting the rights of the family and 
kindred, with a rude idea of a retributive justice, 
"an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," a life for 
a life, where even animals taking life were punished 
with death, where fines were exacted, oaths of 
purgation sworn, and witnesses called in, where 
tithes were paid to the Church, and the poor, the 
widow, and the fatherless were protected by the 
State. 

Yet if, in his political outlook, Alfred stood as 
near to Mosaic Israel as to Christian Rome, if his 
love of truth and justice made him admire the 
rigid impartiality of Hebrew ethics, his tender 
nature was irresistibly drawn to the mercy and 
charity, the "mildheartedness," to use one of his 
favourite English words, of the Christian dispen- 
sation. He passes from the law which God gave 
to Moses to the law which Christ gave to his 
Apostles, and translates the Apostolic letter from 
Jerusalem, which explains in a tolerant spirit 
how far the old law need be observed.^ The 
letter closes with the Golden Rule, which in 
several old Greek and Latin versions of the Acts 

'Acts, c. XV., vv. 23-29. 



Alfredian Literature 331 

of the Apostles was added to the text, and was 
thence transferred to some manuscripts of the 
Vulgate. 

Turning, then, from the primitive Judaic and 
Christian law to its later application, Alfred comes 
to the decrees of the "synods" held by the "holy 
bishops and other noteworthy witan of the English 
(Angel-cyfi) ." He includes the bishops among 
the witan, and makes no distinction in kind be- 
tween ecclesiastical and secular law or between lay 
and clerical assemblies. Church and State to him 
are one: a united body, with different organs and 
functions, but a single aim. 

Most interesting is the brief autobiographical 
introduction which ushers in the English dooms. 
Here, in his own words, Alfred recognises both 
the traditional customary character of English 
law, with its threefold tribal and local division, 
West-Saxon, Mercian, and Kentish, and its per- 
sonal character, as to some extent the work of the 
three great royal lawgivers, Ine, Offa, and Ethel- 
bert. He strikes the same note as in the preface 
to the Pastoral Care. He is an adapter and an 
interpreter rather than a creator, one who dares 
not set down much of his own, but regards him- 
self as a trustee, using the heritage of the past for 
the good of the generations to come.^ The 
haphazard arrangement of these English dooms 
contrasts with the comparatively logical order of 
the biblical sections which precede them. Thrown 

' Supra, Chapter VII., pp. 206, 210. 



332 Alfred the Truthteller 

together almost at random, with little attempt 
at classification, and with many repetitions and 
seeming inconsistencies, they yet show Alfred 
careful of detail, scrupulous, just, and thoughtful 
for his people's welfare. If in their technical 
aspect they belong to legal and administrative 
history, the principle that underlies them gives 
them educational and literary value. 

It was a happy chance that brought together 
in one cover the best manuscripts of the Laws and 
of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which may almost 
be regarded as complementary parts of Alfred's 
scheme of national education, the ancestral cus- 
toms which were "good to hold" illustrated by 
the tribal history, the annals of the deeds of men 
who "wrought a goodly example for those who 
came after." 

The searching criticism to which the so-called 
"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" has been subjected by 
English and German scholars has done much to 
establish the relative historical value of its different 
parts, without impairing its claim to be considered 
a unique vernacular record of the history of a 
primitive Germanic people. There are, as Pro- 
fessor Earle and Mr. Plummer have explained, 
four main Chronicles, contained in seven manu- 
scripts, all based on a common original, an Alfred- 
ian Chronicle, ending with the year 891. '^ In or 

^ The last entry in the first hand in the Parker MS. is the 
marginal date 892, but the annal was left blank, and was filled 
in by another scribe, with an account of the comet of 891. 



X 



J- 

(0 



'^^. 















r^ 5. 












^i 



tr?" 



■^i^ '^t- £ 














r- 1 









.- 



I 2 






3| 
.5 " 



Alfredian Literature 333 

about that year copies were probably made, and 
sent to various religious houses, where they were 
carried on as independent local annals. The oldest 
of the seven manuscripts, which the Elizabethan 
Archbishop Parker bequeathed to Corpus Christi 
College, Cambridge, extends from the birth of 
Christ to the year 1 070, and was apparently a 
Winchester book, transferred to Canterbury in 
the eleventh century. It is now bound up with 
the Latin Acts of Lanfranc, the Laws of Alfred, 
certain lists of popes and bishops, and that Car- 
men Paschale of the poet Sedulius from which 
Asser quotes in his Life of Alfred. 

The association with the laws and papal and 
episcopal lists may be ancient. Gaimar, the 
Anglo-Norman twelfth-century poet, seems in 
one passage to connect the laws with the Alfredian 
Chronicle, as in another passage he distinctly 
connects the Chronicle with Winchester. Alfred, 
he says, caused an English book to be made, of 
adventures and laws, and battles and kings: 

II fist escrivere un livre Engleis, 
Des aventures, e des leis (laws) 
E de batailes de la terra, 
E des reis ki firent la guere. 

And again he tells how the "great book called the 
Chronicle," in which was written the true history 
of the kings, was due to Alfred, and was kept 
chained at Winchester: 

Croniz ad num (name) un livere grant : 



334 Alfred the Truthteller 

Ka Wincestre, en I'eveskez, 
La est des reis la dreite estorie 
E les vies e la memorie. 
Li reis Elfred Tout en demaine, 
Fermer i fist une chaine. 

Thirteen or fourteen different handwritings can 
be traced in the Parker manuscript, and it may be 
divided into thirteen chronological sections, of 
varying age. The first four sections, which end 
with the year 912, and cover the life and death of 
Alfred, appear to date from the late ninth or 
early tenth century. The opening section goes 
to 892, and seems to have been copied from a 
copy of the Alfredian source, for it contains certain 
errors in chronology which are almost certainly 
to be attributed to the carelessness of a copyist, 
since they are not found in the Annals of St. 
Neots, a compilation derived from the same origi- 
nal. As the scribes of the four main Chronicles 
follow this copyist, and repeat his errors, modem 
critics trace these four Chronicles, at least in their 
common section, up to 892, to a hypothetical 
faulty transcript of an original manuscript, ending 
with that year, in which the chronological errors 
did not occur. 

This original manuscript, the fount and source 
of the whole series of Chronicles, may be safely 
attributed to the direct initiative of King Alfred. 
Mr. Plummer believes that "the idea of a national 
Chronicle as opposed to merely local annals" was 
Alfred's own idea, "carried out under his direc- 






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Alfredian Literature 335 

tion," even if he did not actually dictate some of 
the annals, a view which is borne out by Gaimar's 
testimony, and by the fact that the genealogy 
of the West-Saxon royal house prefixed to the 
Parker manuscript is only brought down to the 
accession of Alfred. The affinity in expression 
between the Chronicle and Alfred's translation 
of Orosius, to which attention has been called by 
Mr. Plummer, points in the same direction, while 
the distribution of copies of the Alfredian Chron- 
icle among the different religious houses would be 
quite in accordance with that transmission of the 
English version of the Pastoral Care to the bishops 
of which Alfred speaks in his preface. 

The King's own relation to the Chronicle, also, 
his work of selection and compilation, is not un- 
like his connection with the Laws. Here, too, 
he borrowed from foreign sources, worked up the 
native traditions, and added something of his 
own. Here, too, his circle of ecclesiastical advis- 
ers may have lent efficient help. It has even 
been suggested, though there is no means of proof, 
that the original Alfredian Chronicle was written 
by Archbishop Plegmund. 

The question of the sources from which the 
original Chronicle was drawn is somewhat easier 
of solution. In all probability Alfred found ready 
to his hand ancient annals of the tribal kingdoms, 
either in Latin or English, preserved at Canterbury 
or at Winchester, with lists of kings and arch- 
bishops, and royal genealogies, like the one prefixed 



336 Alfred the Truthteller 

to the Parker manuscript. From about the year 
597 the legends and traditions of the EngHsh 
people, in common with their laws and customs, 
would be written down under the influence of 
Christianity, in imitation of the Roman fash- 
ion. There must also have been many floating 
folk-tales and ballads, "Saxon songs," such as 
Alfred loved to learn by heart, while Bede's Eccle- 
siastical History and other Latin records were, of 
course, easily accessible. From all these mate- 
rials, the King and his helpers may have compiled 
the Chronicle, in much the same way as, about 
the same time, they compiled the Laws. 

Alfred would appear to have dictated or sug- 
gested the written vernacular record of the events 
of his own reign up to 892, with the immediately 
preceding reigns of his three brothers, and to have 
welded this on to an already existing Chronicle, end- 
ing with the reign of his father Ethelwulf . A dis- 
tinct break occurs in the Parker manuscript at the 
year 855, after the mention of the death of Ethel- 
wulf, when an elaborate royal pedigree is inserted. 
Here, says Professor Earle, "the termination of 
an ancient Chronicle is plainly seen, like the lines 
of some ancient seacoast high up in the main- 
land." To make the work complete, the prefatory 
annals would be translated from Bede, and other 
historical Latin sources, or borrowed from old 
English traditions, legends, and songs, and the 
story would thus be carried back to the birth of 
Christ. To the whole, finally, was prefixed, as a 



Alfredian Literature 337 

sort of introduction, the accepted genealogy of 
the West-Saxon royal house, with the regnal table, 
down to the year of Alfred's accession. The last 
entry in this early Chronicle is the notice under 
891 of the death of the learned "Scot" or Irish- 
man, Suibhne or "Swifneh." The scribe then 
wrote the number 892 ready for the next year, 
but did not fill in the annal. Then the book was, 
apparently, transcribed, with several errors in 
chronology, and copies of the transcript were sent 
to the various monasteries, to be developed on 
independent lines. One such copy remained at 
Winchester, and formed the nucleus of the Parker 
manuscript. A second scribe wrote as far as 894, 
a third finished the annals for 894 and 895, and a 
fourth continued the story till 912, some years 
after Alfred's death. 

If the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" can no longer 
be treated as a homogeneous consecutive histori- 
cal narrative, the full realisation of its composite 
character has emphasised the individual value of 
each of its parts. Though modern scientific re- 
search often shatters old beliefs, their fall may 
reveal unexpected truths and hidden beauties. 

Few would probably now accept the early annals 
which describe the settlement of the Germanic 
tribes in Britain as a direct basis for sober history ; 
but as a subsidiary source, full of literary and 
archseological suggestion, the Chronicle has never 
ranked higher than in the present century. Nor 
must scepticism be carried too far. From the 



338 Alfred the Truthteller 

accession of Ethelwulf, at least, the Chronicle 
may be treated as history rather than myth, while 
for the reign of Alfred the Parker manuscript is 
an almost contemporary West-Saxon authority. 

Yet it must be owned that in many ways the 
Alfredian Chronicle is a most disappointing col- 
lection of documents. Opening with a series of 
brief disconnected notices of events, taken from 
biblical or classical history, — the birth of Christ, 
the coming of the Magi, the Massacre of the Inno- 
cents, the accession of Roman emperors, the sack 
of Rome by the Goths, and the withdrawal of the 
Roman legions from Britain, — it proceeds with a 
confused and self-contradictory account of the 
Jutish and Saxon invasions and settlements, 
evidently based on legend and tradition, fanciful 
and unsubstantial as a dream, but, like a dream, 
interesting for its relation to a subconscious reality. 
The annals of the "Heptarchic" kingdoms follow, 
mere notes of military and ecclesiastical affairs, 
and of such natural and social phenomena as 
eclipses of the sun, appearances of comets, or 
outbreaks of pestilence. The deaths of popes, 
kings, and prelates are entered, and the ancient 
genealogies of the various royal houses are care- 
fully preserved, but the whole effect is meagre 
and disjointed. 

Not imtil the ninth century, and the triumphs 
of Egbert, does the narrative begin to widen and 
deepen and to grow more trustworthy, until with 
the entry of Alfred on the scene in 853 and 



Alfredian Literature 339 

the description of his "hallowing to king" by the 
Pope, it becomes a vivid, if concise, record of the 
long Danish wars and the ravages of the vikings 
on both sides of the Channel. Alfred's birth is 
not mentioned, but marginal crosses mark his 
consecration by Pope Leo IV., his share in the 
struggle with the Danes in 868, his victory at 
Ashdown, his accession, the critical year 878, and 
his death in 901. 

The works of peace, administrative, educational, 
and literary, have left no direct trace on these 
annals. The original Alfredian Chronicle, which 
may be regarded as beginning after the mention of 
Ethelwulf's death in the entry under 855, is 
chiefly concerned with the fortunes of war and with 
the deaths of kings and great men. The first sec- 
tion seems to have broken off at 891, leaving the 
space for 892 blank. When another hand took up 
the tale, the years of peace were nearly over, and 
the history of Alfred's reign closes with that 
splendid succession of war-annals, extending from 
893 to 897 (892-896), which Professor Earle de- 
scribed as "the most remarkable piece of writing 
in the whole series of Chronicles." The freedom 
and swing of the prose, the life and freshness of the 
narrative, belong to the ripest period of Alfred's 
intellectual development. The victories of his past 
wars inspire these fine annals, themselves a victory 
of peace. They may rank with the Boethius and 
the Soliloquies as the last and noblest expression 
of the great King's genius, and it is fitting that 



340 Alfred the Truthteller 

they should end the Chronicle of his reign. After 
897, for the few years that remain, there is silence, 
save for the notices of the deaths of Ealdorman 
^thelm and Bishop Heahstan in 898, and of 
Alfred's own death in 901. 

The annalistic character of the Chronicle gives 
continuity to its influence. It links together the 
active and contemplative sides of Alfred's life, 
and translates action into literary form, while 
the more purely literary works reflect the light 
of thought on action. 

The first of these literary works to be produced 
seems to have been the English version of the 
Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. There is no 
need to reject Asser's explicit statement that this 
translation was made by Werferth, Bishop of 
Worcester, by the King's command, though he 
may have had collaborators, as the brief character- 
istic preface, probably from Alfred's own hand, 
suggests. 

I besought my trusty friends [wrote the King] 
that out of God's books of the lives and miracles of 
the saints they would set down for me the instruction 
which follows, so that, strengthened in my mind 
through memory and love, I may, amid the troubles 
of this world, sometimes think on the things of heaven. 

Three manuscripts of the translation survive, 
two of them in close agreement, the third, to 
some extent, a revised version by an imknown 
scholar. 



Alfredian Literature 341 

The original work was extremely popular in 
the Middle Ages. It recounts, in the form of 
dialogues between Pope Gregory and his disciple, 
Peter the Deacon, the lives and miracles of Italian 
saints, and, by its treatment of the question of 
a future life, it had much influence on the medi- 
asval doctrine of purgatory. The translation, as 
Asser notes, is somewhat free, not so much "word 
for word" as "sense for sense" (sensum ex sensu), 
a phrase used also by Alfred in its vernacular 
equivalent {andgit of andgite), in his preface to 
the Anglo-Saxon translation of Gregory's Pastoral 
Care. 

In its appeal to self-love and self-interest, its 
illustrations of the profit to be derived from an as- 
siduous worship of the saints, and its elaboration 
of the system of future rewards and punishments, 
St. Gregory's book of Dialogues represents the 
materialistic side of mediceval Catholicism. Its 
more spiritual side is represented by the great 
Pope's Cura Pastoralis, the Pastoral Care. There 
are many reasons for placing the translation 
of the Pastoralis next to the Dialogues in or- 
der of production. The method of translation, 
"sense for sense," is the same as in the former book. 
The King's helpers were the men whom Asser 
enumerates, Werferth and Plegmund, Grimbald, 
John, and Asser himself. The translation was 
started under similar conditions, "amid the various 
and manifold troubles of this kingdom"; all the 
circumstances fit in with Asser's account of the 



342 Alfred the Truthteller 

beginning of Alfred's literary labours; the subject 
followed obviously from the previous study of 
Gregory's Dialogues-, above all, the preface, one 
of the few practically undoubted pieces of Alfred's 
English prose composition, is, as Professor Wiilker 
has shown, a preface to the whole of his literary 
work, an introduction to all his translations of 
"the books which are most needful for every man 
to know." 

In this preface the King formulates his educa- 
tional ideal with convincing directness. He de- 
scribes the disastrous effects of the Danish wars 
on Wessex, the country all "harried and burnt," 
the churches despoiled of treasure and books, the 
clergy illiterate, learning so "clean decayed" 
that when he came to the throne he could not call 
to mind a single priest south of Thames who knew 
Latin, or could even understand the ecclesiastical 
offices in English, while south of Humber there 
were but few, and north of Humber, to the best 
of his belief, things were not much better. A 
lament for the good old days when England was 
in the van of progress, is followed by a sketch of 
the constructive policy whereby Alfred sought to 
restore that happy past, if "stillness" for the 
task were granted him. He knew that the hope 
of the future lay in the children of the present ; his 
wish was to see "all the freeborn youth in Eng- 
land who have the means set to learning so long 
as they are unfit for other occupations, until 
they can well read English writing," while those 



Alfredian Literature 343 

were to proceed to Latin who were to be fitted 
by higher education for responsible positions. To 
supply material for such a course of training it 
seemed well to provide a series of English text- 
books, and in casting about for Latin works suit- 
able to be translated for this purpose, it was 
natural that the King should place in the front 
rank "the book that is called in Latin Pastoralis, 
and in English hierde-hoc (shepherd's book)," that 
"golden little book" which was the approved 
manual for the training of pastors and teachers. 

The Cura Pastoralis, or Liber Regulce Pastoralis, 
was, indeed, one of the most celebrated of mediae- 
val theological treatises, full of wholesome doctrine 
and practical wisdom, inferior in authority only 
to the Scriptures and the Canon Law. Several 
ninth-century Councils had enjoined its use, and 
Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, had ordered 
each bishop in his province to hold the Canons 
and the Regula Pastoralis in his hand at his ordina- 
tion, while he was exhorted to follow their precepts 
in his life and teaching. When, then, Alfred sent 
a copy of his English version of the Pastoralis 
to every bishop in his kingdom, he was acting in 
accordance with the best ecclesiastical traditions 
of the time. 

To each bishop-stool in my kingdom I will send a 
copy [he wrote at the close of his preface], and in 
each is an cestel worth fifty mancuses. And I command 
in God's name that no man take the csstel from the 



344 Alfred the Truthteller 

book, nor the book from the minster. It is un- 
known, how long there may be such learned bishops, 
as now, God be thanked, are everywhere. Where- 
fore I wish them always to remain at that place, 
unless the bishop will have them with him, or if they 
have been lent out, or sent away to be copied. 

An (BStel was probably a pointer or " book-stafif " 
of rich workmanship, and the manuscripts would 
doubtless have covers of costly materials, which 
have long since vanished."'' 

A peculiar interest attaches to the Wor- 
cester manuscript of the Pastoral Care, a small 
quarto, written in several hands, now one of 
the chief treasures of the Bodleian Library at 
Oxford. It is, almost certainly, the actual copy 
which Werferth received from the King; the text 
is headed: "This Book shall to Worcester"; and 
the preface opens with a greeting from "Alfred 
king" to "Werferth bishop." The pages of the 
manuscript are yellow with age, and pierced with 
wormholes, yet the writing is still clear and black 
and beautiful, with its fair rounded letters, as 
easy to read as print, its coloured capitals, red 
chapter-headings, and delicately drawn and il- 
luminated initials; here a piece of graceful inter- 
lacing or plaiting, here a fantastic dragon-headed 

' Supra, Chapter VIII. A memorandum on an early MS. of 
the Pastoral Care records that Plegmund archbishop has been 
given his book, and Swithulf bishop and Werferth bishop, 
while later MSS. bear the names of the bishops Heahstan and 
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Alfredian Literature 345 

scroll, here, again, a grotesque human mask or 
figure decoratively treated ; the whole, alike in form 
and in subject-matter, a silent but eloquent witness 
to the artistic and literary enlightenment of the 
so-called " Dark Age. " 

An original epilogue in English alliterative 
metre ends the translation of the Pastoral Care, 
and a short verse prologue precedes it. In this 
the book, speaking for itself, tells how "Alfred 
king turned each word of me into English, and 
sent me to his writers, south and north, and bid 
them make more such copies, that he might send 
them to his bishops." From these words, and 
from the differences of hand in the contemporary 
Worcester manuscript, it may be inferred that 
Alfred employed a regular staff of scribes and 
clerks in his literary enterprises, but it is impossible 
to decide how the work was distributed, or what 
personal share the King took in its production. 
Like a mediaeval master-painter he may have set 
the model, sketched the outlines, suggested the 
character and expression, and left the details to 
be filled in by his subordinates. Like a modem 
editor, he may have contented himself with organ- 
ising and supervising a co-operative undertaking, 
contributing a preface here and a correction there. 
Or, like the true student of every period, he may 
have been attracted by the very toil and drudgery 
of composition, and have accounted it his highest 
privilege to be himself an active member of the 
confraternity of letters, in close sympathy with 



346 Alfred the Truthteller 

the living thought and the intellectual endeavour 
of his time. 

In his Boethius, the King pauses in his transla- 
tion to describe the Mind groping in ignorance as 
in a dark room, until Wisdom shines upon it like 
light through the chink of a door. ^ It was towards 
that heavenly light of wisdom that Alfred was 
straining, and in throwing open the door for him- 
self he opened it also to his people. He was more 
than a mere patron of learned men like Charles 
the Bald, more even than a founder of schools and 
a pioneer of education like Charles the Great, or 
Louis the Pious, and it is by no undue stretch of 
imagination that the direct influence of his stead- 
fast truth-loving spirit has been traced in the 
books which a venerable and unbroken tradition 
has associated with his name. 

The frequent repetitions in the translation of 
the Pastoral Care and the double renderings of 
the same passage may imply that here, at least, the 
task of transcription was performed by scribes 
writing to Alfred's own dictation. He names his 
helpers, indeed, in the preface, Plegmund and 
Asser, Grimbald and John, the learned clerks who 
possibly suggested many of the explanatory addi- 
tions to the text, as well as the solution of verbal 
and grammatical difficulties. The fact that Pleg- 
mund, who became primate in 890, is called "my 
archbishop" in the preface, seems to fix the earliest 
date at which the translation could have been 

' XXXV., § iii., p. 97- 



Alfredian Literature 347 

completed. The inclusion of Grimbald, who is 
thought to have been in Flanders in 892, among 
the King's advisers, and Asset's omission of any 
mention of the English version of the Pastoral 
Care in his Life of Alfred, where he quotes from 
the original Latin text, may throw it some years 
later. The King's own words in the preface show 
that the work was carried on among many distrac- 
tions and interruptions: "then, amid the various 
and manifold troubles of this kingdom, I began 
to turn into English the book that is called in Latin 
Pastoralis.'" 

The lack of originality in Alfred's literary work 
in itself marks him out as the child of his age. 
His books belong to a time when reverence for 
the written word was strong, and the critical 
faculty was weak, when a diligent aptitude for 
collecting and interpreting the thoughts of the 
past seemed the height of intellectual achievement. 
Asser compares the King's mental activity to the 
flight of a bee gathering honey from herbs and 
flowers, an apt, if somewhat trite, metaphor, for 
by patient assimilation, selection, and rearrange- 
ment of his materials, he transformed them into 
new creations, subtly compounded of familiar 
elements. In the Pastoral Care, more than in his 
other translations, he keeps close to the letter as 
well as to the spirit of the Latin text, though even 
here the rendering is free. Words are transposed, 
two synonymous English words are used to trans- 
late one Latin term, and an obvious effort is made 



348 Alfred the Truthteller 

to give the meaning of the original, even at the 
expense of verbal accuracy. The omissions and 
misinterpretations are few, while the additions 
are chiefly of the nature of expansions, explaining 
difficult words and obscure allusions, or simpli- 
fying and materialising abstract conceptions, to 
bring them down to the level of imlearned English 
readers. 

Alfred is less metaphysical and erudite than 
St. Gregory, less terse and more homely in lan- 
guage. He illustrates the unknown by the known, 
and in striving to convey the sense of his sixth- 
century author, he has incidentally left us a picture 
of the English life of his own day. Thus Uriah 
for him is David's "own loyal thegn," ^ King David 
himself, and the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and 
Ezekiel, are "wise men," witegan or witan,^ Jacob, 
like Alfred's father Ethelwulf, tithes his inherit- 
ance, ^ rulers are " shire-men," ^ servants (ministri) 
are thegns, slaves (servi) are "theows" {iheowas)^ 
jugglers {histriones) are "evil gleemen."^ Purple 
{purpura) is explained as the kingly robe, because 
it betokens royal authority, ' manna is " the sweet 

I III., pp. 34-5; cf. L., pp. 392-3. 

'■XV., pp. 92-3; XVIII., pp. 132-3; XXI., pp. 152-3.; 
XXXIII., pp. 216-17; XLIII., pp. 314-15; XLV., pp. 342-3. 
Cf. XXXV., pp. 244-5, etc. Witega, Witga, a wise man, or a 
prophet with exceptional wisdom. 

3 XVI., pp. loo-ioi. 

1 XVII., pp. 108-9; XXI., pp. 152-3. 

5 Cf. XXIX., pp. 200-201. " XLIV., pp. 326-7. 

1 XIV., pp. 84-5. 



Alfredian Literature 349 

food that came down from heaven,"^ adamant is 
"the hard stone that we call athamans."' 

The simple piety and humanity of St. Gregory's 
book, its noble morality and quiet humour, found 
a ready response in Alfred's nature, and many 
passages must have appealed to him with special 
poignancy. The description of the mind lost in 
worldly cares, rising above them by concentrating 
itself on study, ^ the comparison of ruler and sub- 
jects to the head guiding the feet in the right way,-* 
the injunctions to rulers to meditate on high 
matters, and to subjects to discharge humble 
duties,^ the metaphors drawn from war and sea- 
manship, were all alike echoes from his own thought 
and life. As he translated the comparison of 
backsliding Christians to the careless folk who, 
after a victory in the open field, let themselves be 
taken when fast locked in their burhs, or the exhor- 
tation to fortify the burh of the mind against the 
insidious foe,*^ or the reflection that "every army 
has less strength when it comes, if its coming be 
known beforehand, because it sees those ready 
whom it thought 7 to find unprepared," his experi- 
ences at Chippenham in 878 must have lent point 
and reality to St. Gregory's Bunyan-like allegory 
of the city of Mansoul. ■ 

In rendering the Latin hostis by the graphic 

^ XVII., pp. 124-5. " XXXVII., pp. 270-1. 

3 XXII., pp. 168-9. " XVIII., pp. 130-133. s Ibid. 

« XXXIIL, pp. 226-229; cf. XXI., pp. 162-3 
7 LVI., pp. 432-3. 



350 Alfred the Truthteller 

English word stcelherigeas, marauders, who "steal" 
and "harry," a term which the Chronicle applies 
to the Danes, ^ his fair west country, "all harried 
and burnt," may have swum once more before 
his eyes. Or when he wrote of the sluggard who 
would not plough in winter for spring sowing, ^ of 
the ceor/ at work in his orchard, or "apple- town, "^ 
of the acres joined one to another and stretching 
to the boundary of the land,'' he may have looked 
out on the English open fields with their acre and 
half-acre strips narrowing to the horizon, and on 
hillsides and valleys white with fruit-blossom, 
and have seen them transfigured with spiritual 
meaning. 

This same love of parable, and perception of 
the deeper significance of common things, colours 
also the little original epilogue in alliterative verse 
which closes the translation of the Pastoral Care. 
As Alfred sent forth St. Gregory's wisdom, "the 
waters which the God of Hosts promised as a com- 
fort to us earth-dwellers," his fancy played with 
concrete familiar images — pure water dispersed, 
threading marshy fields in shallow murmuring 
streams, or gathered in a well, deep and still, for 
the service of man — the leaky pitcher that spills 
the precious draught, the mended vessel that 

' XXXIII,, pp. 228-229; A. S. Chron., suh ann. 897, 921. 
' XXXIX., pp. 284-5. 

3 XL., pp. 292-3; cf. XLIX., pp. 380-1, on cBppeUunum (in 
"apple- towns," or orchards). 
-• XLIV., pp. 328-9. 



Alfredian Literature 351 

preserves it — the whole picture painted in simple 
language, not altogether devoid of poetical beauty, 
which, like the rudely metrical verses of the pro- 
logue, may probably be attributed to the King 
himself. 

The mention in the prologue to the Pastoral 
Care of the connection of St, Gregory with England, 
through the mission of St. Augustine, has led to 
the supposition that the next book to be translated 
by Alfred and his helpers would be Bede's Eccle- 
siastical History of the Engish Nation, in which 
the course of that mission is described. The 
stiffness and lack of elasticity in the English ren- 
dering of Bede has been also adduced as evidence 
of the early date of its composition. Mr. Plum- 
mer, on the other hand, has maintained the prior- 
ity of the Orosius on the grounds of its affinity 
in language and construction with the Alfredian 
Chronicle, and of the independent nature of the 
passages in the Chronicle derived from Bede, 
which appear to have been taken straight from 
the Latin, and show no traces of the influence of 
the English translation. The question is further 
complicated by the doubts which have been 
thrown upon the authorship of the Bede, but the 
exact order of the two works is of less importance, 
if both are assigned to the same phase of literary 
development, and belong in character and spirit 
to the more practical and directly educational 
group of Alfred's writings. 

If the translation of the Pastoral Care provided 



352 Alfred the Truthteller 

for the instruction of the English clergy, the 
Orosius and the Bede appealed to a wider public, 
and the Orosius in particular, remodelled to meet 
the needs of the English people, became a treasure- 
house of curious and useful learning. The Uni- 
versal History of Orosius was composed in the 
beginning of the fifth century, as an apology for 
the Christians, on whom the heathen Romans 
were inclined to lay the blame for the sack of their 
city by the Goths in 410 a.d. Orosius himself 
was the disciple of St. Augustine of Hippo, and 
his book bore a definite relation to the City of God, 
which was written with much the same purpose. 
One-sided and inaccurate as was the work of 
Orosius, it was the best and most comprehensive 
historical survey which mediaeval scholars pos- 
sessed, while its distinctively Christian tone won 
for it the approval of churchmen. 

To the topical and polemical character of the 
original may be attributed the freedom of Alfred's 
treatment of the text. He was both editor and 
translator, and he did not hesitate to alter, curtail, 
and amplify, as he thought best, adapting and 
shaping the concise Latin constructions to suit 
the taste and understanding of his Germanic 
subjects. His English version, if marred by 
ignorance, haste, and inexperience, is redeemed by 
freshness, vividness of presentment, and a genuine 
enthusiasm for knowledge. It has all the char- 
acteristic marks of Alfred's style, and its author- 
ship has never been questioned, though the only 




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A PAGE FROM THE OLDEST MS. OF KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS 

(By courtesj' of the New Palaeographical Society) 

Library of Lord Tollemaclie, Helmingham Hall, Suffolk 

Probably late gth or early lOth Century 



Alfredian Literature 353 

evidence for it is Ohthere's address, in the geo- 
graphical section, to "his lord king Alfred," with 
William of Malmesbury's inclusion of " Orosius " in 
his twelfth-century list of Alfred's writings. 

The oldest extant manuscript of the English 
Orosius may date from the end of the ninth century, 
and vies in beauty and interest with the contem- 
porary Worcester manuscript of the Pastoral Care 
and the later Parker manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle. In arrangement and plan it differs 
widely from the Latin original. Alfred reduces the 
seven books of Orosius to six, cuts down his two 
hundred chapters by more than half, and gives 
laconic chapter-headings which are probably his 
own. The geographical introduction is expanded 
and enriched by original additions, the historical 
portions are expurgated and annotated in accord- 
ance with those educationalaims which were never 
far from Alfred's thoughts. 

The geographical interpolations, in particular, 
are of unusual interest and value. They consist, 
first, of Alfred's description of "Germany," by 
which he understands all the country from the 
river Don on the east to the Rhine on the west, 
and from the Danube on the south to the White 
Sea on the north, including Scandinavia. The 
description, though little more than a list of 
boundaries, was, from the comparative accuracy 
of its topography, a real contribution to the know- 
ledge of the time, drawn, it may well be, from the 
reports of travellers visiting the West-Saxon court. 



354 Alfred the Truthteller 

More certainly the two other great additions to 
the text of Orosius come from this source. These 
are the travellers' tales of Ohthere or Ottar, the 
Norwegian, who doubled the North Cape, and 
of Wulfstan, who sailed in seven days and nights 
from Haithaby or Schleswig to the eastern shores 
of the Baltic. 

Inserted in the English translation of Orosius, 
each of these narratives forms a whole in itself, 
and round each a critical literature has sprung up. 
Ohthere* s story, as an early and independent 
record of northern adventure, has appealed to 
Germanic explorers, the heirs of the vikings, in 
all ages. Hakluyt knew and reproduced it in the 
sixteenth century, and in these last days it has 
won the admiring sympathy of the Norwegian 
sea-captain's countryman and successor Frithiof 
Nansen. Ohthere "told his lord king Alfred," 
of the far north, with its eternal lure for the ad- 
venturous spirit of man. He told how he lived 
northernmost of all Northmen, and how he jour- 
neyed from his home to the waste land where the 
Finns dwelt, who were fishers and fowlers and 
huntsmen, and the Beormas or Perms, who were 
an agricultural people, living about the White 
Sea. He told of whales and walruses, or "horse- 
whales," whose tusks of fine ivory he brought to 
the King, and whose hide made good ropes; of 
seals, too, and of the tame reindeer which were 
used to decoy their wild fellows. He described 
how he himself, one of the first men in Halgoland, 



Alfredian Literature 355 

his "shire," had six hundred reindeer, though 
only twenty head of cattle, twenty sheep, and 
twenty swine, while "the little that he ploughed, he 
ploughed with horses," a striking contrast to the 
English fashion of using plough-oxen. He told 
how Norway was "very long, and very narrow," 
with arable ground lying along the sea, and wild 
moors inland to eastward, so wide in some parts 
that it would take two weeks to cross them. He 
spoke of Sweden, also, of the Cwenas or Cwsens, 
those north-eastern tribesmen who carried their 
small light boats overland to the lakes of Norway, 
when they were at feud with the Norwegians, and 
of the Danish isles, and the lands in which the 
Angles dwelt before they came to Britain, lands 
by which he passed in his five days' sail from Scir- 
ingshall in southern Norway to the town of 
Haithaby or Schleswig. 

Wulfstan, whose brief account of his voyage 
immediately follows Ohthere's more detailed 
reminiscences, described his visit to eastern Prus- 
sia, that marvellous "East-land," full of honey 
and fish, where every burh had a king, where kings 
and rich men drank milk, while poor men and 
slaves quaffed mead, and where strange funeral 
rites and customs of inheritance were in vogue. 

If Alfred's sense of the unity of knowledge, 
and his practical conception of his own educational 
function, saved him from any doubt of the pro- 
priety of introducing contemporary narratives 
into a treatise on ancient geography and history, 



356 Alfred the Truthteller 

his zeal in the pursuit of information of all kinds 
made it easy for him to turn from natural science 
and present realities to the outworn mythology 
and traditions of antiquity. To his unjaded 
imagination, indeed, all seemed alike marvellous, 
Ohthere's walruses and the war-elephants of 
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, the fortunes of a Scan- 
dinavian trading-ship and the strategy of a 
campaign in the Persian or Punic wars. 

The historical portion of the English Orosius 
contains less directly original matter than the 
geographical section, but the independence with 
which the text is handled is highly characteristic 
of Alfred's method of editing. He omits and 
expands, and in the work of selection his own 
mind and taste stand revealed. He passes by 
local details of transitory importance, to linger 
over deeds of heroism, and instances of courage, 
patriotism, and self-sacrifice. He explains the 
unfamiliar, a Roman triiimph, the temple of 
Janus, the centaurs, the Amazons, those "poor 
homeless women," and inserts an occasional fact 
or anecdote from his private store of knowledge, 
taken, it may be, from the notes in his Handbook. 
Thus he adds to the account of Caesar's invasions 
of Britain that he fought "in the land which is 
called Kent-land," or "near the ford which is 
called WalHngford."' Thus, too, he tells how 
Titus the Emperor thought the day lost on which 
he had done no good action, ^ a story which appears 

' (V., XII.), IX., pp. 238-239. ' (VL, VIII.), IX., pp. 264-5. 



Alfredian Literature 357 

again in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The pic- 
turesque has its charm for Alfred, but he likes to 
materialise his fancies. In his description of the 
plagues of Egypt the frogs prevent men from 
working, and dishes are served up, "as full of 
reptiles as of meat," while the flies torment men 
and cattle "with fiery smarting bites." '^ He 
modernises, also, reading his personal experience 
into the history of the past. In his version of 
Orosius, the Persian king deprives an ealdorman 
of his shire, ^ Tyrtaeus, the lame poet-leader of 
the Spartan army, encourages his men by song 
and chant in the fashion of an English gleeman,^ 
and the poet Homer is transformed into Omarus 
the scop, the "shaper," "maker," or bard.'* Philip 
of Macedon gathers ships, "becomes a viking," 
and plunders merchant vessels to replenish his 
empty coffers during his long siege of Byzantium 
or Constantinople, " a burh on the sea, the 
highest kingly seat, and head of all the eastern 
realm." 5 

The military passages in the text of the Orosius 
were specially interesting to the soldier-king: — 
Pharaoh's " war- waggons " overturned by the 
God of Hosts, the marches and counter-marches, 
the sieges and battles, the sea-fights and strata- 
gems of Greek and Persian, Carthaginian and 

- (I., VII.), X., pp. 36-7. ' (III., I.), III., i., pp. 96-7. 

3 (L, XIIII.), XXL, pp. 56-7. " (I., XL), XVIL, pp. 49-50. 
s (III., VII.), XIIL, pp. 1 16-17. He scipa gegaderode, and 
wicingas wurdon. 



358 Alfred the Truthteller 

Roman kings and "ealdormen," with their follow- 
ing of "thegns" and "fyrdmen." Alfred, as Mr. 
Plummer notes, may even have occasionally bor- 
rowed a practical suggestion from his historical 
reading, while his explanations of the text may 
have been based on his personal experience. The 
Scythians' fine answer, that it was "dearer" to 
them "to fight, than to pay tribute,"^ may have 
roused reluctant thoughts of English treasure 
yielded to the vikings, and memories of Athelney 
may have underlain the writing of the passage 
that told how the king of Egypt with his "folk" 
was driven out, and pursued, and how all the 
country was wasted, "save one fenland."^ 

This power of seeing the present in the past lent 
life and colour to the work of Alfred and his fel- 
low-translators. Their defective scholarship often 
led them into absurd and childish blunders of 
fact and language — the subtler shades of meaning 
nearly always escaped them — they never sotmded 
the depths of the Greek spirit, or understood the 
full greatness of Imperial Rome. Yet, at least, 
in their self-imposed task they were neither dry 
pedants nor mechanical drudges, but teachers 
seeking diligently after truth, simple lovers of 
ancient learning, and daring pioneers of a new 
civilisation. Joint-labourers in that workshop in 
which the common language was slowly welded 
into a literary instrument of great force and flexi- 
bility, as they experimented in words and turns 

» (I., X.), XIV., pp. 44-5. » Ibid. 



Alfredian Literature 359 

of speech, they, half unconsciously, fixed a stand- 
ard for the English of the future. 

The recurrent passages in dooms and legal 
documents, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and 
the Alfredian translations, the coincidences in ex- 
pression between the Orosius and the Chronicle, 
the Bede and the Dialogues of St. Gregory, the 
Pastoral Care and Alfred's Laws, or, again, between 
the Boethius and the English rendering of the 
Soliloquies of St. Augustine, all show the gradual 
formation of a distinctive English prose style. 
Some phrases were tried, and found wanting, 
others stood the test of time, and, ennobled by 
association, passed into ordinary use. An ingen- 
ious fancy may see the hand of Werferth in one 
place, and the touch of Plegmund in another, or 
the direct influence of the King throughout, but 
it matters little how the labour was divided. It 
is not because Alfred wrote any particular book 
that he is worthy of a place among the fathers of 
English literature, but because he was the creator 
of a scholarly tradition, and the leader of a wide- 
spread intellectual movement, a leader capable 
of inspiring his followers with something of his 
own idealism, and of sharing with them his hopes 
and ambitions. 

The attribution of the English version of Bede's 
Ecclesiastical History to King Alfred has been 
attacked on two grounds, — the stiffness and crudity 
of the translation itself, and the Mercian character- 
istics of the dialect in which it is written. The 



36o Alfred the Truthteller 

question is still undecided, but the arguments 
brought against Alfred's authorship are hardly 
convincing enough to compel the abandonment 
of that old and pleasant belief. Literal unid- 
iomatic translation would be natural enough if the 
Bede were one of the King's earlier works, or it 
might simply result from the fact that the book, 
concerned with English affairs, needed less altera- 
tion and explanation than the Orosius, an "apo- 
logy" transformed into a text-book, or the more 
abstruse works of St. Gregory and Boethius. The 
Mercian character of the dialect has not been 
established beyond a doubt, and in any case, the 
oldest extant manuscript, to which alone the- 
argument applies, dates only from the second 
half of the tenth century, and may quite possibly 
be a Mercian transcript of a West-Saxon original. 
Even if it be assumed that the original manuscript 
was in Mercian dialect, it may merely have been 
written by a Mercian scribe under the King's 
direction. The preface to the Pastoral Care shows 
that Mercia had preserved some traces of its 
early literary distinction through the desolating 
Danish wars. When Alfred came to the throne 
there were still a few Latin scholars "south of 
Humber," and it was to Mercia that he looked 
for help in his educational schemes. The most 
ancient version of the Beowulf epic which has 
come down to us seems to have been a Mercian 
recension of the eighth century; the dooms of 
Offa of Mercia supplied material for Alfred's Code, 



Alfredian Literature 361 

and the inscription on the famous Alfred Jewel 
has an Anglian form. 

The historical and external evidence for Alfred's 
connection with the English Bede, again, is too 
strong, early, and explicit to be lightly disre- 
garded. Not only does William of Malmesbury, 
in the twelfth century, include Bede's Gesta Anglo- 
rum among the books which King Alfred "gave to 
English ears." The eleventh-century Cambridge 
manuscript of the English translation of Bede has 
the Latin distich at the beginning and end: 

Historicus quondam fecit me Beda Latinum, 
Alfred, rex Saxo, transtulit ille pius. 
(Bede the historian made me formerly in Latin, 
Alfred, the pious Saxon king, translated me.) 

It also contains the West-Saxon royal genealogy 
which precedes the Parker manuscript of the 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a genealogy which stops 
at the accession of Alfred, and if, as is probable, 
both distich and genealogy once formed part of the 
still older, but now imperfect, Oxford manuscript 
of the English Bede, of which the Cambridge 
manuscript is a copy, this evidence will go back 
to within a century of Alfred's death. To about 
the same period belongs the very definite state- 
ment of the English homilist. Abbot ^Ifric, who 
mentions, in his homily on St. Gregory the Great, 
"Historia Anglorum, which King Alfred turned 
from Latin into English." Alfred's claim to be 
the translator of Bede thus rests on a sound basis 



362 Alfred the Truthteller 

of tenth-century tradition, and if, in the absence 
of direct proof, it must remain unsettled, it seems 
likely that here, as with the Pastoral Care and the 
Orosius, the King inspired and directed the work, 
though much of the actual composition may have 
been done by others. 

The translation itself betrays an unpractised 
hand. It suggests a learned, if somewhat timid, 
scholar, testing the possibilities of a novel medium 
of expression, and interpreting his author so liter- 
ally "word for word" that he forgets the impor- 
tance of also giving "sense for sense." There are 
fewer gross blunders than in the Orosius, but the 
rendering, though fairly accurate and grammatical, 
is so overcrowded with Latinisms, transferred 
wholesale from the text, or from the interlinear 
explanatory glosses, that at times it is scarcely 
intelligible. 

There are practically no additions to the original, 
but much is omitted, — papal and official letters, 
poems, the account of the Pelagian heresy, the 
wearisome Paschal controversies of the seventh 
century, and the borrowed description of the holy 
places of Palestine, with the chronological sum- 
mary at the close of the book. The early history, 
before the coming of St. Augustine, is abridged, 
and details relating to northern England are left 
out, though such beautiful episodes as the meet- 
ing of St. Gregory and the English slave-boys at 
Rome, or the life and death of St. Oswald of North- 
umbria, are retained in full, and are dwelt upon 



Alfredian Literature 363 

with evident appreciation and sympathy. In the 
story of the poet Casdmon, the sweet singer who, 
"bHthe of mood towards all God's men," ended 
his life in the silence of sleep, the language of the 
translation is as simple and dignified as its theme. 

The English Bede also contains a hymn in 
West-Saxon dialect which is found in several of 
the extant Latin versions, and has been very 
generally accepted as the authentic work of 
Caedmon, since it occurs in a Northumbrian form, 
in the earliest existing manuscript of the Historia 
Anglorum. The absence of any additions to 
the southern history from the local knowledge of 
Alfred and his scribes has been variously referred 
to respect for the text of Bede, and to the possi- 
bility that the progress of the Alfredian Chronicle 
had already rendered such interpolations super- 
fluous. 

One of the chief features of historical interest 
in the original text is the way in which the Latin 
terminology reflects the Anglo-Saxon social life 
and institutions of the beginning of the eighth 
century, more particularly in Northumbria. In 
spite of local differences between north and south, 
these institutions were still familiar to the English 
translators of the ninth century. It was only 
necessary to strip off the classical trappings of 
Bede's duces and principes, consules and satrapce, 
comites, ministri, and milites, for ealdormen and 
heretogan, gesiths and king's thegns to reappear. 
There was no question here, as in the Pastoral 



364 Alfred the Truthteller 

Care and the Orosius, of explaining the unknown 
by the known. The old accustomed manner of 
life was easy to recognise. The petty king, with 
his bodyguard of loyal thegns, the assembly of 
elders and councillors, the witan in their gemot, 
the fyrd going forth to battle, the royal hall, the 
small walled town, the populous monastery, as 
Bede described them, had changed but little in 
the lapse of a hundred and fifty years, and these 
at least were common alike to southern and to 
northern England. 

By far the most interesting of Alfred's four 
great translations, more arresting in its revelations 
of personality than even the Pastoral Care, is his 
English version of the De Consolatione Philo- 
sophicB of Boethius, that Consolation of Philosophy 
which was one of the favourite books of the Mid- 
dle Ages. This translation was, apparently, the 
work of Alfred's riper age, completed, perhaps, 
about 897, some two or three years before his 
death, ^ when he, like Boethius, was looking towards 
the calm haven of eternal happiness, after the 
storms and billows of life. 

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, consul 
and head of the Roman Senate in the early sixth 
century, under Theodoric, the Ostrogothic King 
of Italy, was, after years of honour and prosperity, 
accused of conspiracy against his master, cast 
into a dungeon, and finally tortured and put to 
death. A man of vast learning, a philosopher, 

^ Infra, Chapter XI. 



Alfredian Literature 365 

scientist, and mathematician, versed in music 
and poetry, and a skilful craftsman, his writings 
cover practically the whole field of the knowledge 
of his day. Though he was much more of a 
Platonist than a Christian,^ the fact that he was 
persecuted by the Arian Theodoric won for him 
the reputation of a Catholic martyr, and he was 
actually canonised as St. Severinus. The Con- 
solation was written in prison, to soothe his lone- 
liness and sense of injustice. It is in mingled 
prose and verse, and takes the form of a dialogue 
between Boethius and divine Philosophy, in which 
she cheers and exhorts her disciple, and leaves 
him resigned, resting in the thought of the ever- 
lasting righteousness of God. 

The almost unrivalled popularity of the De 
Consolatione was probably due partly to its at- 
tractive mixture of poetry with prose, and to its 
dialogue form — for mediaeval readers were like 
children in their taste for verses and "conversa- 
tions"; partly to the abiding interest of its 
subject-matter, the vanity of earthly greatness, 
and the stability of heavenly wisdom. Yet that 
it should be popular is not really surprising, for 
it is, as Gibbon called it, a "golden volume," 
breathing high courage and touched with poetic 
thought. A philosophic treatise which has been 
translated by King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and 
Queen Elizabeth, to which Dante turned for 

' He was probably a professing Christian, though even this 
has been denied. Cf. Stewart, Boethius, c. i. 



366 Alfred the Truthteller 

solace after the death of Beatrice, and in which 
Sir Thomas More found comfort during his own 
imprisonment^ needs no apology. It must have 
in it something human and universal, some appeal 
to fundamental truths and emotions, which even 
now, when its moralising has grown trite, and its 
arguments have lost their force, still lingers about 
its natural cries of sorrow and perplexity, its Job- 
like wrestlings with the mystery of pain. This 
one book, moreover, stood for much in mediaeval 
education. It was the authorised manual of 
moral philosophy, the mirror in which the thinkers 
of the early Middle Ages saw reflected the mighty 
shades of Plato and Aristotle. 

King Alfred's authorship of the first English 
prose version of the De Consolatione has never 
been doubted. It is asserted in the preface to 
the translation itself: "King Alfred was the inter- 
preter of this book, and he turned it from book- 
Latin into English." Ethelwerd says that the 
King turned many volumes from Latin into the vul- 
gar tongue, among them the " lachrymose book " 
of Boethius, and William of Malmesbury adds that 
Asser explained the book of Boethius on the Con- 
solation of Philosophy in plainer words, "a labour 
necessary in those days, ridiculous in ours," by 
the King's command, that he might the more 
easily turn it into the English tongue. The Book 
of Hyde, on the other hand, makes Werferth 
translate the Consolation as well as the Dialogues 

' He wrote an imitation of it in prison. 



Alfredian Literature 367 

of St. Gregory, but gives no authority for the 
statement, while an equally unsupported and im- 
probable story lays the scene of the translation 
at Alfred's hunting-seat of Woodstock near Oxford. 

Even independently of external testimony, the 
internal evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Boethius 
would be almost enough to decide the question 
of its authorship. Here, if anywhere, the dead 
Alfred yet speaks with a living voice, telling of his 
hopes and fears, his ambitions and difficulties, 
his ideals and disappointments. 

The book has survived in two manuscripts, 
of which one probably goes back to the tenth 
century, while the other dates from about the be- 
ginning of the twelfth century. This later manu- 
script gives prose renderings of both the prose and 
the verse sections, the prosed and the metra or 
carmina of the Latin original. The earlier manu- 
script has a prose version of the prose sections, 
with a preface, or proem, also in prose, and an 
alliterative English verse translation of the metra^ 
with a short metrical proem or prelude. As this 
verse translation is not taken straight from the 
Latin, but is clearly based on the Anglo-Saxon 
prose version of the carmina, it is probable that 
Alfred's original translation was entirely in prose, 
and it is possible that, as William of Malmesbury 
says, it was made from Asser's paraphrase. 

After the preface, which is perhaps by another 
hand, Alfred's prose version begins with a short 
explanatory introduction, giving the history of the 



368 Alfred the Truthteller 

wise and book-learned consul or heretoga, "Boe- 
tius," who lived in the days when the Goths 
from Scythia had warred against the Roman 
Empire, and Theodoric had won all the realm of 
Italy. Alfred then passes on to the text of the 
ConsolatioUj which he treats with the utmost 
freedom, simplifying, explaining, abridging, and 
expanding, till his translation is almost an original 
work. This is particularly noticeable in the last 
chapters, which correspond to the fifth book of 
the Latin, where, fired by the controversial nature 
of the questions at issue, he diverges into independ- 
ent metaphysical speculations on free-will, fore- 
knowledge, and the nature of God, and gives a 
strongly Christian tinge to the Neo-Platonic 
philosophy of Boethius. These omissions and 
additions are in themselves deeply interesting, 
for they throw light on Alfred's mental and spiri- 
tual development, as well as on his taste and 
judgment. Thus he often forgets altogether that 
it is Boethius who is speaking, and argues with 
Wisdom, Reason, or Philosophy, in his own person, 
or makes the questioner the mind of man. 

He enlarges but little on the geographical 
notices in the book; of these he had perhaps 
already said enough in the Orosius, but he shows 
off his classical and mythological knowledge, 
telling the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, Ulys- 
ses and Circe, at length, and introducing additional 
notes on Hercules, on Jove and the Titans, and 
on such famous Romans as Tarquin and Nero, 





,Jlii*****«>»<K.. 








COINS 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon 

Coins in the British Museum. Vol. II, 

Plate VI, Nos. i and i8 ; Plate V, 

No. 13 ; 

Types i, xvi, xxi 

An Alfred penny, with moneyer's name, a 

penny with the names of Alfred 

and Cnut (Guthred), and a 

Winchester penny 



COINS 

CNUT (guthred) and SIEFRED 

From Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon 

Coins in the British Museum. Vol. I, 

Plate XXV, No. 13 

Dated by Keary circa 894 



Alfredian Literature 369 

Regulus and Cato, with Homer and Virgil, the 
best of the Greek and Latin poets, and Cicero, the 
" Roman heretoga and sage." 

It has recently been pointed out^ that many of 
Alfred's additions to his text are derived from 
early Latin commentaries on the De Consolatione. 
If this weakens his claim to originality, it also 
illustrates his powers of adaptation. His selec- 
tions from these commentaries show his interest 
in history, mythology, and natural science, and 
his love of allegory and symbolism. Thus he 
adopts and expands the simile of the wheel, its 
axle God, its nave, spokes, and fellies, men, good 
and bad, yet all, even the worst and farthest 
from God, in touch with the divine centre, which 
itself remains still, though it bears the whole 
weight of the waggon, and guides its movement.^ 
He gives a personal application to the comparison 
of the "three orders " of men to the tools of a king's 
trade, identifying himself with the king whose 
needs he is describing. 

"I desired tools and materials to carry on the 
work I was set to do," he writes, looking back 
over his struggling reign, and then, in words which 
come from no commentary, but straight from his 
own heart, he makes his simple confession of the 
high aim of his Hfe: "It has ever been my will to 
live worthily while I lived, and after my death 

^ By Dr. G. Schepss, Archiv fur das Studium der neueren 
Sprachen, xciv. (2 and 3), pp. 149-160. Cf. Sedgefield, Boe- 
thius, pp. xxiv., xxxi. S. ' XXXIX., § vii., pp. 129-30. 

34 



370 Alfred the Truthteller 

to leave to them that should come after me my 
memory in good works." ' Alfred's own, too, in 
appreciation, if not in conception, is the fine met- 
aphor of the eagle, where Wisdom says: "When 
I soar up with my servants, we look down on the 
storms of this world, as the eagle, when he rises 
in stormy weather above the clouds, where no 
storm can harm him." ^ Even so, in his last years, 
Alfred rose above doubt and anxiety into a serene 
air, whence he could contemplate his varied experi- 
ence, and frame, from his knowledge of joy and 
sorrow alike, a philosophy of life and of death. 

If, however, King Alfred may be accepted with- 
out hesitation as the translator of that English 
version of the Consolation on which the oldest 
existing manuscripts are based, his authorship of 
the Anglo-Saxon verse translation of the Latin 
metra is more open to doubt. With it, moreover, 
stands or falls his authorship of the two prefaces, 
for the prose preface states that when King Alfred 
had studied the Consolation, and turned it from 
Latin into English prose, he wrought it up once 
more into songs, or lays (leothe), "as it is now 
done," and the metrical prelude begins : "Thus the 
old tale, Alfred told us, West-Saxons' king. He 
showed the craft, the skill of song-makers." ^ 

' XVII., pp. 40, 41. Cf. supra, Chapter VII. 

' VIL, § iii., p. 18. 

3 The rejection of the prose preface would weaken, also, one 
of the links in the chain of external evidence for the King's author- 
ship of the prose version. The preface has been attributed to 
a later copyist. 



Alfredian Literature 371 

That Alfred wrote these lays has been denied 
on the ground of their inferior poetic quality, and 
the improbability that the King, after completing 
the vigorous prose translation, should have turned 
it into comparatively feeble verse. It has also 
been urged that, though the lays are based on the 
English prose version, some of the metra in that 
version are omitted, where the formula, "Then 
Wisdom began to sing," which generally intro- 
duces the metrical sections, is absent; a piece of 
carelessness of which the translator of the prose 
version would hardly have been guilty. Lastly, 
it is alleged that the writer of the verses betrays 
ignorance of the classics, as compared with the 
prose translator. None of these arguments can 
be taken as conclusive. 

That Alfred could write somewhat indifferent 
verse is seen in his metrical preface to the Pastoral 
Care, and he may have tried to popularise the 
teaching of Boethius still further by giving it a 
form which woiild catch the ear of an unlettered 
public. The omission of some of the metra is 
not necessarily incompatible with the King's 
authorship, and the instances of classical ignorance 
on the part of the versifier are too few and uncer- 
tain to be convincing. Hence the question becomes 
a matter of opinion, on which critics will probably 
continue to differ, imtil decisive evidence is pro- 
duced on one side or the other. At present, both 
the supporters and the opponents of Alfred's 
authorship of the verse translation cast the burden 



372 Alfred the Truthteller 

of proof on those who disagree with them, and, 
as yet, neither side has been able satisfactorily 
to meet the challenge.^ The discussion, though 
interesting from a literary point of view, has lit- 
tle biographical importance, for the Anglo-Saxon 
metra throw no fresh light on Alfred's character 
or history. 

The King's authorship of the prose preface to 
the Boethius, which is very generally denied, may 
also be left undetermined. This "proem "is, in 
great part, a mere repetition of the preface to 
the Pastoral Care, but the little prayer with which 
it ends seems to be original, and recalls a passage in 
Alfred's translation of the Soliloquies of St. Augus- 
tine: "Every one," he there wrote, following out 
his independent train of thought, "rejoiceth, that 
at least he can understand, according to the meas- 
ure of his understanding." "Every man," runs 
the preface to the Boethius, "must speak what he 
speaketh and do what he doeth according to the 
measure of his understanding and his leisure." 
Therefore, King Alfred, with a most winning sim- 
plicity "prays, and beseeches in God's name, every 
man who cares to read this book [the Consolation], 
to pray for him, and not to blame him if he un- 

' Cf. Wiilker, Grundriss, iii., ii., § 499, p. 435: If Alfred's 
authorship of the prose preface be rejected "the supporters of 
the King's authorship [of the Metra] must prove their case, and 
here they have been decidedly unsuccessful." Sedgefield, Boe- 
thius, Introd., p. xl: "It lies with the opponents of the King's 
authorship of the Cotton Metra to prove their case, and this 
they have not done." 



Alfredian Literature 373 

derstand it better than [the translator] . " ' If these 
are not Alfred's actual words, they at least express 
the spirit of his work, the cool judgment which 
could recognise his own limitations, and the brave 
hopefulness which prevented such recognition from 
paralysing effort. 

There is a remarkable affinity between the 
prose version of the Boethius and Alfred's last 
noteworthy translation, his English rendering 
of the Soliloquies of St. Augustine. This little 
work consists of a preface, and three books, the 
first two derived chiefly from the Soliloquies, the 
third drawn partly from St. Augustine's letter on 
the Vision of God (De Videndo Deo), partly from 
the writings of St. Gregory, from the Vulgate, and 
from other sources. It is often called "Blooms" 
from the opening and closing phrases of the first 
and second books: "Here end the blooms of the 
first book." "Here beginneth the gathering of 
the blooms (or the anthology) of the second book." 
The translation, which is only known in a corrupt 
and mutilated twelfth-century manuscript, has 
been attributed to Alfred on the strength of the 
concluding words: "Here end the sayings (cwidas) 
which King Alfred collected," and though the 
King's authorship has been doubted, it is borne 
out by the evidence of the book itself. The 
preface, in particular, and the additions to the 
Latin text, breathe the very spirit of Alfred, as 
shown in his earlier writings. 

' Cf. Sol., bk. i., p. 32. 



374 Alfred the Truthteller 

Professor Wiilker at one time even suggested 
that the "Blooms" might represent the lost Hand- 
book'^ with its collection of "blossoms," or flowers 
of thought, a theory which seems to be supported 
by the expression "the sayings" of King Alfred, 
which tallies with Florence of Worcester's men- 
tion of the book called Dicta regis ^Ifredi. This 
theory, however, has now been abandoned, and 
Professor Wiilker is inclined to agree with other 
critics in treating the Soliloquies as the last of 
Alfred's completed translations, and the preface 
as a sort of epilogue to his works. 

This is the memorable preface in which Alfred 
describes his literary labours under the figure of a 
man gathering wood from a forest for the building 
of his house. ^ He had collected much, but much 
remained for those who should come after him. 
To them he bequeathed his task. "I exhort 
every one who is able, and has many wains, to 
wend his way to the same wood." For himself, 
he turned in thought from the "log-hut" of this 
transitory life to the "eternal home." It is the 
same tone which is heard in the Boethius, the voice 
of a man who has almost done his practical work, 
and for whom abstract speculation has an in- 
creasing attraction. 

In form, in treatment, and in subject-matter, 
the Boethius and the Soliloquies are singularly 
alike. Both are dialogues between Reason and 
the soul of man; both are concerned with meta- 

^ Supra, p. 324. ^ Supra, Chapter VIII., p. 291. 



Alfredian Literature 375 

physical questions, with the definition of good and 
evil, the nature of God, and the life of the unseen 
world. The turns of phrase, the similes, metaphors, 
and illustrations, also correspond so constantly 
as almost to compel belief in the common source 
of the two translations. 

The first book follows St. Augustine's Latin 
somewhat closely, though with certain important 
additions, which strongly favour the theory of 
Alfred's authorship. Here he asks what he is, 
and whether his mind and soul are mortal or 
immortal. His mind goes "fearing and searching 
out various and rare things." He compares 
memory to a good steward, guarding the treasures 
of knowledge, the soul to a ship, moored to God 
by the anchors of faith, hope, and love, and God 
himself to the lord of a household, or to a king, 
whose subjects flock to his court from every side. ^ 
He digresses, to describe the natural changes of 
the seasons, or the blessings of friendship. He 
dwells on St. Augustine's thought of the student's 
need of solitude, and expands it, with recollections, 
it may be, of the many cares which had hindered 
his own literary work. "Thou wouldst need to 
have a place retired and empty . . . and a few 
wise and skilful men who would in no way hinder 
thee, but help thy ability," he makes Reason 
declare, and to St. Augustine's answer: "I have 
none of these," he adds, "neither the leisure, nor 

^Supra, Chapter VII., p. 233; Chapter VIII., pp. 280-1,285; 
bk. i., pp. 3, 8, 11-12, 22, 29-30, 44. 



376 Alfred the Truthteller 

the help of other men, nor a place retired enough 

to suit me for such a task {crceft)" ^ 

There are interesting and characteristic touches, 
too, in the mention of the lord's writ with its seal, * 
and in the description of the teaching of "the 
science which we call geometrica,^' by means of a 
ball, an apple, or a painted egg, whereby the 
motions of the heavenly bodies could be illustrated. ^ 

Echoes of the Pastoral Care and of the Boethius 
are heard in the phrase, the "craft of crafts," 
applied to the knowledge of God, in the comparison 
of men to the "tools" of God, and in the expres- 
sion of the King's desire for sufficient wealth to 
enable him to feed and keep the men who depended 
on him/ 

The short second book is more independent of 
the Latin original, especially towards its close. 
Here Alfred is occupied with the problem of im- 
mortality, and he adapts the subject to his English 
readers by omitting much of St. Augustine's di- 
alectical argument, and relying for his proofs 
on the witness of Christ, of the Prophets, the 
Apostles, and the Fathers of the Church, and on 
the soul's natural craving for eternal life. He uses 
familiar illustrations, moreover, and reverts to 
his favourite themes, the love of God, as the 
highest good and wisdom, God's rule over the 
kings of this world, and the hollowness of earthly 
power. He speaks of the Apostles as "Christ's 

' Bk. i., pp. 4, 9, 33. ^ Book i., p. 23. 

3 Book i., p. 20. 4 Book i., pp. 30, 35, 37. 



Alfredian Literature 377 

thegns,"* and reveals his own attitude towards 
the acquisition of knowledge, when, speaking for 
St. Augustine, he says that no statement is too 
incredible for him to accept on his lord's authority, 
and adds: "Yea, I even have many companions, 
whom I would believe, if they should say that 
they saw and heard, just as much as if I myself 
had seen and heard." ^ 

In the third book Alfred tries to complete what 
St. Augustine had left unfinished. The second 
book had ended with a question as to the con- 
tinuance of knowledge and understanding after 
death. "I do not suppose," writes Alfred, "that 
the life there will be without reason, any more than 
it is here with children; in that case there would 
be too little gladness in that life."^ St. Augustine 
referred this question to his own epistle on the 
Vision of God {de Videndo Deo). Alfred borrows 
from this, from the City of God, St. Gregory's 
Dialogues and Morals, and the Vulgate, with St. 
Jerome's Commentary on St. Luke. He recasts 
his material in dialogue form, to bring it into har- 
mony with the two former books, and gives the 
whole the impress of his own personality, as he 
strives to put into words his thoughts of the life 
of the soul when it is released from "the prison 
of the body." The pains of exile and the joy of 
the banished favourite who returns to his former 
lord shadow forth for him the happiness of heaven 
after the sufferings of this world. He pictures 

^ Book ii., p. 61. ^ Book ii., p. 60. J Book ii., p. 64. 



378 Alfred the Truthteller 

hell as the court prison of a king, where the misery 
of the captives is increased by the sight of the 
pleasures they have forfeited, and recalls, perhaps, 
his childish travels, when he shows the difference 
between belief and knowledge by saying that he 
does not know who built Rome because he had 
seen the city, but because it was told him. " Nor 
even know I of what kin I am," he continues, with 
his mind still fixed on his boyhood, "or who my 
father or mother was, save by hearsay." "There- 
fore," he concludes, in a striking passage, "me- 
thinks that man is very foolish and very wretched 
who will not increase his understanding while here 
in this world, and also wish and desire to come to 
the eternal life, where nothing is hid from us."^ 

Since some of the additions to the "Blooms" 
agree with translated passages in the Anglo-Saxon 
Boethius, it is almost certain that the English 
version of the Soliloquies was completed after the 
Consolation, not long, probably, before Alfred's 
death. This lends a special interest to William 
of Malmesbury's statement that the King "began 
to translate the Psalter, but died when he had 
hardly finished the first part," for even if this is 
based on a misunderstanding, it shows the twelfth- 
century tradition that Alfred's literary activity 
only ended with his life. The fact that in an 
extant eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon version of 
the Psalter the first fifty psalms are in prose, and 
the remainder in alliterative verse, suggested to 

* Book iii., pp. 65-70. 



Alfredian Literature 379 

Professor Wiilker' that these fifty psalms might 
represent Alfred's work. 

This Psalter includes the Latin text, and Latin 
rubrics, and each of the first fifty psalms has a 
short explanatory and historical introduction in 
the vernacular. Mr. Plummer, moreover, has 
pointed out^ that the mediaeval psalter was often 
divided, for liturgical purposes, into three parts, 
each containing fifty psalms, and that the "first 
part," of which William of Malmesbury speaks, 
would thus correspond very well to the fifty prose 
psalms which precede the alliterative version. 
The general style of the translation is not unlike 
that of the Pastoral Care, but the internal evidence 
is hardly strong enough to outweigh the entire 
lack of contemporary authority for assigning it 
to Alfred. Such coincidences as have been traced 
between the Psalter and his well-authenticated 
writings may merely be due to the literary fashion 
of the day, a fashion doubtless set by the King and 
his collaborators, but persisting after his death. 

Alfred's fame as a man of letters early became 
nebulous, and while his literary ability was exag- 
gerated, and books of many kinds were indiscrim- 
inately attributed to him, the true details of his 
work were forgotten. If the tenth-century homi- 
list ^Ifric could write that in his time there were 
no godly books in the vulgar tongue "save those 
which King Alfred wisely turned from Latin into 
English," Ethelwerd declared that the number of 

' Grundriss, p. 436. ' Life dnd Times, p. 147 flf. 



380 Alfred the Truthteller 

the volumes the King translated was unknown, 
and the Anglo-Saxon Life of St. Neot, which is 
probably somewhat later in date, vaguely men- 
tions the "many books which King Alfred wrote 
by the spirit of God." While, then, the author- 
ship of the Anglo-Saxon Psalter must remain 
imcertain, Alfred's translation of the whole Bible 
may be dismissed to the realm of legend, in com- 
pany with his " Domesday Book," his collection 
of proverbs, his version of ^sop's fables, and his 
treatise on falconry. 

On a different plane is the Anglo-Saxon Mar- 
tyrology, which, though it has no known direct 
connection with the King, was probably written 
in his lifetime, and under the influence of his 
literary revival. Here many of the character- 
istics of the Alfredian school reappear, and the 
short lives of the saints are given with the pithy, 
straightforward simplicity which distinguishes 
the English prose of the later ninth century. To 
have given the impulse to the development of 
that terse, vigorous, racy native prose, is one of 
Alfred's chief titles to the gratitude of all English- 
speaking peoples. "Though Saxon were then a 
naked and scanted Language, destitute both of 
Phrase and Originals wherewith to express signifi- 
cantly," wrote Sir John Spelman, in his seven- 
teenth-century Life of King Alfred, "yet were his 
Versions so full, so proper, and with that Lively 
Expression, that they did infinitely take the 
Readers." 



Alfredian Literature 381 

The peculiar character of the Alfredian revival 
of letters may best be appreciated by a comparison 
with the corresponding movement on the Con- 
tinent. The West Prankish court, even in its 
decadence, was a centre of learning and cultiva- 
tion, but, except in the poem of the Ludwigslied, 
and in an occasional public document, Latin was 
the medium of its literary expression, the language 
in which treatises and homilies, letters and annals 
were written. It was, indeed, the very ignorance 
of the English people which gave birth to English 
prose literature. It was Alfred's educational zeal 
rather than his literary taste which led him to 
turn "book Latin" into the English tongue, and 
to bequeath to his descendants an unrivalled 
treasure of vernacular literature. This is the 
more remarkable, since Alfred had many foreign 
clerks and Latinists in his court-circle, and was 
in various ways strongly influenced by Prankish 
example. 

When the Welshman, Asser, set himself to com- 
pile the king's Life, he wrote in Latin as a matter 
of course, and even translated the annals he bor- 
rowed from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle into the 
common language of educated men.^ In spite 
of its classical form, however, Asser's contemporary 
Life of King Alfred plays much the same part in 
the ninth-century English revival of letters as 

' Cf . Sir John Spelman's Life of King Alfred, which was origi- 
nally written in English, but published in a Latin translation. 
Infra, Chapter XII. 



382 Alfred the Truthteller 

Einhard's Life of Charles the Great in the earlier 
Carolingian Renaissance. 

One of the fiercest of modem literary contro- 
versies has been waged over the authenticity of 
Asser's little book. It is worth fighting for, 
since, were it to be proved a forgery, one of 
the main sources of Alfredian history would be 
lost, and the figure of the great King would 
become even more shadowy than it is at present. 
The question has been complicated by the de- 
struction of the only manuscript of the De Rebus 
Gestis Mlfredi in the great Cotton Library fire of 
1 73 1. From existing accounts of it, and from the 
facsimile of a page printed in Wise's edition, it 
seems to have been written in the eleventh cent- 
ury, probably from a ninth-century original. It 
was transcribed for Archbishop Parker in the 
sixteenth century, and two other manuscript 
copies are also extant, with one seventeenth-cent- 
ury transcript, in addition to the four printed 
editions, Parker's, published in 1574, Camden's, 
1602-3, Wise's, 1722, and Petrie's, 1848.^ 

Though three out of these four editions were 
issued before the loss of the manuscript, their 
value is impaired by interpolations, alterations, 
and inaccuracies. Parker made considerable ad- 
ditions to the text, including the story of Alfred 
and the cakes, from the Annals of St. Neots, or 
Annates Asserii, an anonymous post-Conquest 
compilation, which borrowed freely from the 

^ In the Monumenta Histonca Brilannica. 



Alfredian Literature 383 

Life of Alfred, and was consequently thought by 
Parker to represent a fuller text of Asser's work. 
Camden inserted in Parker's edition the famous 
passage relating to the University of Oxford, and 
Wise reproduced the former editions, after a 
somewhat superficial collation with the still 
extant Cotton manuscript. ^ 

Under these circumstances it is not surprising 
that Asser's ill-compacted medley of annals and 
biography should have been regarded with dis- 
trust. Thomas Wright,^ in the middle of the 
nineteenth century, and Sir Henry Howorth,^ 
in more recent times, have even attempted to 
prove it to be a monkish forgery of the tenth 
century, or later, connected with the priory of 
St. Neots. Mr. Stevenson's critical edition,'* 
however, has now practically demonstrated the 
genuineness of at least the nucleus of the book. 
He has shown that the forgery theory rests to a 
great extent on misunderstandings of the author's 
meaning, on inferences drawn from the inter- 
polated sections, or on pure assumption, while 
there is much positive evidence in favour of the 
authenticity of the original portions of the text. 

' This collation was made for Wise by his friend James Hill. 

' Archcsologia, xxix., pp. 192-201; Essays upon Archaological 
Subjects, i., pp. 172-85; Biographia Britannica Literaria, i., pp. 
409-12. ^ AthencBum, 1876-7. 

4 Asse/s Life of King Alfred, etc., with Introduction and Com- 
mentary, W. H. Stevenson, M.A., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 
1904. The above paragraphs are derived from this invaluable 
edition, in which a full account of the controversy is given. 



384 Alfred the Truthteller 

Thus the burnt Cotton manuscript, which prob- 
ably dated from the first half of the eleventh 
century, was, in all likelihood, a copy of the ninth- 
century original. 

The language of the biography, again, resembles 
the Latin written in England and on the Continent 
in the period before the Norman Conquest, a Latin 
containing many Prankish and Celtic elements; 
and the mixture of annalistic and biographical 
matter, with the abrupt termination, before the 
King's death, are paralleled in the ninth-century 
lives of Louis the Pious. The very omissions 
and confusions of fact and chronology, which 
would argue great clumsiness in a forger writing 
some time after the events, are not unnatural in 
the unfinished work of a contemporary of Alfred. 
Other signs of an early origin are the writer's 
mention of St. Gueriir, the Cornish saint, whose 
popularity was eclipsed in the tenth century by 
that of St. Neot, and his apparent ignorance of 
the fame as saint and martyr of the East- Anglian 
King Edmund. 

The Welsh nationality of the author, moreover, 
seems to be indicated by words and phrases of 
specially Celtic Latin, by occasional mistransla- 
tions of the Anglo-Saxon of the Chronicle, by the 
mention of the British equivalents for English 
place-names, and by the accuracy and purity 
with which the proper names of the Welsh princes 
are given. The exact knowledge of these obscure 
names, and of such details as the precise time of 



Alfredian Literature 385 

the eclipse of 878, or of the reception in Europe 
of letters from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, with 
the additions to the accounts in the Chronicle of 
the battle of Ashdown and the siege of Cynwit, 
have every appearance of being based on personal 
information. ^ 

Still, Asser's book, even when purged of all 
interpolated material, can only be used with 
caution. It is rhetorical and pretentious in style, 
involved in arrangement, self-contradictory in 
chronology, and exaggerated in statement. It 
passes unexpectedly from annals, translated mainly 
from the Chronicle, to original biography, and 
back again, with equal abruptness, to annals. The 
personality of the author is almost as obtrusively 
present as in the self-conscious writings of a later 
Welsh ecclesiastic, Giraldus Cambrensis, and the 
simple, sincere, informal Alfred of the Pastoral 
Care, the Boethius, and the Soliloquies shows 
strangely distorted in the glass of flattery and 
courtly eulogy. 

Very little is known of Asser himself, save from 
the internal evidence of his book. In the preface 
to the Pastoral Care, Alfred speaks of "Asser my 
bishop," among those who had helped him in the 
translation, and there is evidence in ancient 
episcopal lists that he held the see of Sherborne 
after Bishop Wulfsige, the date of whose death is 
unknown. Asser's own death is entered in the 
Annates Camhrice, a Welsh Chronicle, under 908, 

' Cf. Stevenson, op. cit., Introduction. 
35 



386 Alfred the Truthteller 

and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under 910, as 
"Asser bishop . . . who was bishop at Sherborne." 
He thus survived his royal master some years, 
and he may possibly be the Bishop of Sherborne 
to whom Alfred bequeathed a himdred mancuses 
in his will.^ His signature as a witness is ap- 
pended to charters of doubtful authenticity from 
900 to 904. His name, otherwise unknown in 
English documents, occurs in Welsh sources. 

According to his own accoimt, Asser was a kins- 
man of Nobis, Bishop of St. Davids, who died in 
873, and was brought up and ordained in western 
Wales. Summoned by King Alfred to Wessex, 
which in Welsh fashion he calls Saxonia, he jour- 
neyed to the land of the southern or "right-hand" 
Saxons {Dexteralium Saxonum), another Welsh 
touch. Here, at the royal vill of Denu, perhaps 
East Dean or West Dean near the Sussex Seaford, 
he first met his future master and hero. He 
refused to accede to Alfred's request to spend at 
least half of every year at the West-Saxon court, 
until he had consulted his own people, but he 
promised to pay the King a second visit in six 
months' time. As he rode homewards, however, 
he was attacked with fever in the city of Win- 
tonia, probably Caerwent,^ on the way to St. 
Davids, and lay sick for a year and a week. 

A correspondence with Alfred followed, and it 

^ This is, however, very doubtful. Cf. infra, Chapter XI. 
' It is often supposed to have been Winchester, but this is 
unlikely. — Stevenson, op. cit., pp. Ixxiii., 313, note to c. 79, 33. 



Alfredian Literature 387 

was arranged that Asser should divide his time 
equally between Wales and Wessex, spending 
three months alternately in each. In this way 
he and his friends at St. Davids hoped to win the 
support of the West-Saxon King in their struggle 
with Hemeid, the tyrannical prince of Dyfed, 
that is Pembrokeshire and part of Carmarthen- 
shire, who had expelled Bishop Nobis ^ and Asser 
from his dominions. In spite of this arrangement, 
when Asser rejoined King Alfred at the unidentified 
royal vill of Leonajord,'^ he remained for eight 
months, reading and studying with the King, and 
was then only reluctantly allowed to depart. At 
Christmas he received from Alfred a grant of the 
two monasteries of Congresbury and Banwell, 
with a valuable silk pallium and a quantity of 
incense, accompanied by a hint that further 
favours were in store. 

"In later times, indeed," continues Asser, "he 
gave me Exeter with all the 'parish' {parochia) 
which belonged to it in Saxonia (Wessex) and in 
Cornwall, besides innumerable daily gifts of all 
kinds of worldly riches." As parochia at this 
time was used in the sense of "diocese," and as 
there is no official record of an episcopal see of 
Exeter till the middle of the eleventh century, 

' Asser calls him " archbishop," and seems to call himself 
bishop. It has been suggested that he was Bishop of St. Davids, 
but there is no real proof that he held this oflBce. — Stevenson, 
op. cit., p. Ixxi. 

' Possibly Landford, in Wiltshire. — Stevenson, op. cit., p. 318 
ff., note to c. 81, 9. 



388 Alfred the Truthteller 

this passage has been regarded with suspicion. 
But it is not improbable that Alfred made Asser 
Bishop of Devonshire and Cornwall, the Celtic 
western part of the diocese of Sherborne, before 
he became diocesan of the whole see.^ Unfor- 
tunately, the exact time when these various 
events took place cannot be ascertained, owing 
to Asser' s lack of method. The King, however, 
began to "read and interpret" in 887, the year 
in which the annahstic portion of Asser's work 
ends, and he may have come to the West-Saxon 
court some two or three years earlier. Since in 
the biographical sections he speaks of Alfred as 
being "now" in the forty-fifth year of his age,^ 
he probably wrote his book in or about 893. 

Verbose, prolix, full of wearisome repetitions 
and tedious moralising, Asser's work has yet 
achieved something of its avowed object — the 
recording of what he knew of Alfred's infancy and 
boyhood, and the description of the life, manners, 
conversation, and actions of his "lord Alfred, 
King of the Anglo-Saxons," after his marriage in 
868. It is to him that we owe the stories of 
Eadburh, wife of King Beorhtric, of the revolt of 
Ethelbald, and his marriage with Judith, of Al- 
fred's mother Osburh and the illtiminated man- 
uscript, and the accoimt of the home and court 

' There was a bishop of Devon and Cornwall with his see at 
Crediton in the reign of Athelstan, about 926; the see was moved 
to Exeter in 1050. Stevenson, op. cit., p, ciii., § 69, p. 321 ff., 
note to c. 81, 28, » Asser, c. 91, 4. 



Alfredian Literature 389 

life of his hero, of his frail body and undaunted 
spirit, his piety and learning, his mechanical 
skill and artistic tastes, and his wise government 
of the kingdom. With all its defects, the book 
remains a most important contemporary au- 
thority for the history of the ninth century, 
and the chief source from which later mediaeval 
annalists drew their knowledge of the life and reign 
of King Alfred. Florence of Worcester and 
Simeon of Durham incorporated it in their Chron- 
icles, and their successors borrowed from them in 
turn. After the appearance of Parker's and Cam- 
den's editions, again, the printed text, with its 
many interpolations, was accepted as the basis of 
Alfredian biography by more modem writers, 
and thus the name of Asser came to be as inti- 
mately connected with Alfred as Einhard's name 
with Charles the Great, or Boswell's with Samuel 
Johnson. 



CHAPTER X 

THE SIX years' peace, THE THREE YEARS' WAR, 
AND THE BUILDING OF THE LONG SHIPS, 

887-896 

THE winning of London was the first step in 
that reconquest of the Danelaw which Al- 
fred's sons and grandsons were destined to com- 
plete. The peace of 886 had left the West-Saxon 
kingdom shnmken, indeed, but fairly compact 
and imited. Though the lofty pretensions of 
Alfred's grandfather Egbert had, perforce, been 
abandoned, they were replaced by a solid, if 
modest, reality of power. 

Kent, with its dependent shires, was now, more 
truly than ever before, an integral part of Wessex. 
No Kentish under-king was appointed, as in the 
days of Ethelwulf, but Plegmund, Alfred's friend 
and adviser, became Archbishop of Canterbury in 
890, and worked in perfect harmony with the 
King until the close of the reign. 

The eastern half of the old Mercian kingdom 
was in the hands of the Danes, but the western 
half, with London, was under the government of 
Alfred's son-in-law, Ethelred, "lord of the Mer- 

390 



[887-896] The Six Years' Peace 391 

cians. " Ethelred, as his signature to a Mercian 
charter shows, had held the office of dux or ealdor- 
man in Mercia under Burhred. He married 
Ethelflaed, the eldest child of Alfred and Ealhs- 
with, probably not earlier than 884, when she 
would be about fifteen, as she cannot have been 
bom before 869. In 886 Alfred entrusted London 
to his keeping, and from that year onwards he 
plays an important part in West-Saxon history as 
the chief of the Mercian ealdormen, the guardian 
of London, and the defender of the western fron- 
tier against the Welsh. He seems to have occupied 
a position of almost royal dignity, and even 
signs one charter subregulus, while Ethelwerd 
and the Celtic sources call him rex, and Asser 
states that Anaraut, prince of North Wales, sub- 
mitted to Alfred on condition that he and his 
people should stand in the same relation to the 
West-Saxon King as Ethelred and the Mercians. 
Ethelfioed might claim to belong to the Mercian 
royal stock through her maternal grandmother 
Eadburh, and she, too, is sometimes styled queen 
(regina) . ^ 

This was the third marriage alliance between 
the royal houses of Wessex and Mercia since the 
accession of Ethelwulf, and each had coincided 
with a political crisis. In 853 the union of Ethels- 
with, Alfred's sister, with Burhred, the Mercian 
King, was, perhaps, connected with the combined 
West-Saxon and Mercian expedition of that year, 

» Cf . infra, Chapter XI. 



392 Alfred the Truthteller [887- 

against the North Welsh. In 868, according to 
Asser, Alfred's own marriage with the Mercian 
Ealhswith took place, in the year when Wessex 
and Mercia made a joint attack on the Danes at 
Nottingham. After the cession of western Mercia 
to Wessex, and the disappearance of the puppet- 
king Ceolwulf, Alfred seems to have chosen the 
most capable of Burhred's ealdormen as the 
governor of the new territory, and, by giving him 
the hand of his daughter, to have bound him 
closely to the West-Saxon throne. Henceforward, 
though Mercia preserved a measure of independ- 
ence, it ceased to be a separate kingdom, and was 
gradually incorporated in the West-Saxon legal 
and administrative system. 

With the Danish kingdoms of East Anglia and 
Northumbria, or York, tmder their Christian kings, 
Guthrum-Athelstan, and Cnut-Guthred, Healf- 
dene's successor, Alfred was, apparently, on 
friendly terms. It was Cnut-Guthred who gave 
the bearers of St. Cuthbert's holy body a resting- 
place at Chester-le-street, and both he and Guth- 
rum-Athelstan copied Alfred's coins, and to some 
extent adopted western customs. It has even 
been suggested' that the rare Northumbrian penny 
which bears the name of Alfred on the obverse, 
and Cnut Rex on the reverse,^ may point to some 
recognition of Alfred's suzerainty, but the history 

* Oman, England before the Norm. Conq., p. 482. 
' B. M. Cat. of A.-S. Coins, i., p. 204 ff. Plates XXIV.-V., ii., 
p. 36; Plate VI., 18. 



8961 



The Six Years' Peace 393 



of the northern Danish kingdom in these years 
is very obscure, while of the condition of Danish 
Mercia and of those midland Danish districts 
which were afterwards known as the territories of 
the Five Boroughs, nothing is certainly known. 

In Wales, Alfred's supremacy seems to have 
been widely acknowledged. Asser, writing, it ap- 
pears, of the time of his own coming to Wessex, 
before 887, says that at that period and "long 
before," the "regions of South Britain" had be- 
longed to King Alfred, "and still so belong." 
He goes on to enumerate the rulers of these lands : 
Hemeid of Demetica, or Dyfed, and Helised or 
Elised ap Teudur, King of Brecknock, who had 
submitted to Alfred to save themselves from the 
oppression of the North Welsh princes; Howel 
ap Rhys, King of Glegwising (Glamorgan and part 
of Monmouthshire), and the kings of Gwent in 
Monmouthshire, Brochmail and Femmail, sons 
of Mouric, who sought Alfred's protection against 
their enemies, "compelled by the force and tyranny 
of ealdorman {comes) Eadred (Ethelred) and of 
the Mercians. " 

If 885, the date given for Hemeid's death in the 
A finales CambricB, may be accepted,^ Alfred must 
have been suzerain of at least part of South Wales 
even before the winning of London. The North 
Welsh came in later, under Anaraut, one of the 



' He is said to have died at Rome. Another Welsh source, 
the Gwentian Brut, puts his death in 894. 



394 Alfred the Truthteller [887- 

sons of Rotri, or Roderick Mawr.^ Roderick 
himself is said to have been slain by the "Saxons" 
in 877.* Of Anaraut Asser states that, 

deserting at last the friendship of the Northumbrians, 
from which he had gained no good, but rather harm, 
and diligently seeking the friendship of the King, 
he came into his presence, and when the King had 
received him honourably, and had taken him from 
the bishop's hand as his son in confirmation, and had 
enriched him with very great gifts, he submitted 
himself with all his people to the King's lordship, on 
condition that in all things he should be as obedient 
to the King's will as Ethelred and the Mercians.^ 

Since the North Welsh helped the English against 
the Danes in 893, it is probable that this submis- 
sion was made shortly before Asser recorded it, 
writing, it may be, in Wales, with access to local 
information. His assertions are borne out by the 
later, and somewhat fragmentary, Welsh sources, 
and the high-sounding dedication of his book to 
his "venerable and most pious lord, ruler {rector) 
of all the Christians of the island of Britain, Alfred 
King of the Anglo-Saxons," may have some justi- 
fication in fact. 

But as the price paid for England's peace had 
been the suffering of the Continental kingdoms, so 
the revival of prosperity on the Continent was 

' Asser speaks of six sons ; the Welsh sources only mention four. 
* Annates Cambria, sub anno. ^ C 80, 



896] The Three Years' War 395 

marked by a fresh attempt to conquer Wessex, 
and to extend the Danelaw to the English Channel. 
The Empire had reached its lowest depth of 
humiliation with the siege of Paris, followed, in 
887, by the deposition of Charles the Fat. While 
Odo, or Eudes, the brave defender of Paris, ruled 
over the West Franks, the East Franks fotmd a 
leader of energy and capacity in their new King, 
Amulf of Carinthia, who became Emperor in 896. 
Though the Northmen defeated the Franks in 
June, 891, on the Geule, a tributary of the Maas, 
Amulf led his army in person against the strongly 
fortified viking position on the Dyle, near Lou- 
vain, and, in November of the same year, gained a 
signal victory. "King Eamulf , " writes the Anglo- 
Saxon chronicler, "fought against the riding host 
{rcede here) before the ships came up, and put it to 
flight." Yet, though the sea-kings Godfred and 
Sigfred were slain, and the interior of Germany 
was finally delivered from viking ravages, the 
"Great Army" was still strong enough to winter 
at Louvain, and to resume its plunder raids in the 
following spring. 

Not until the autumn of 892 ' did the main body 
of the Northmen, with their wives, their children, 
and their horses, cross the Channel, leaving a 
famine-stricken and desolate land behind them. 
A fleet of two hundred and fifty ships gathered at 
Boulogne, sailed to the coast of Kent, and pene- 
trated into the heart of the Andredsweald, that 

^ The Parker Chronicle erroneously gives 893 as the date. 



396 Alfred the Truthteller [887- 

" great wood" which was said to be a hundred and 
twelve miles long and thirty miles wide. They 
went up the Limene or Lymne, then a navigable 
stream, now only to be traced from geographical 
indications aiad ancient docimients. Four miles 
from the river-mouth they seized an unfinished 
earthwork, a " half- wrought " geweorc or fcesten, 
which was only occupied by a few ceorls, possibly 
the workmen who were building it, in connection 
with Alfred's scheme of coastal and frontier de- 
fence.^ The vikings proceeded to entrench them- 
selves in winter quarters at Appledore, in southern 
Kent, now an inland village, but in those days 
probably situated on the tidal river Lymne. * 

Meanwhile, a smaller fleet of eighty Danish 
ships had entered the estuary of the Thames, and 
had built a fort (geweorc) at Milton, on the Swale, 
in northern Kent, just opposite the isle of Sheppey. 
Its leader was Hastein, Haesten, or Hasting, like 
Ragnar Lodbrok, Guthrum, or RoUo, a bold and 
crafty adventurer, in the guise of a typical pirate 
of romance. ^ 

Threatened by this double danger, Alfred's first 
thought seems to have been to secure the loyalty of 
the Danelaw. He exacted oaths of fidelity from 

^ Cf. supra, Chapter VII. 

' The coast-Hne has changed greatly in this district, owing 
to the clearing of the Andredsweald. It is possible that the 
" half -wrought " geweorc and the geweorc at Appledore were one 
and the same. 

3 Cf. Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xiii., p. 439, article on Hasting, 
C. W. Abbott. 



896] The Three Years' War 397 

the Northumbrian and East-Anglian Danes, and 
took hostages also from the East Anglians, who 
were now under the rule of Eohric or Eric, Guth- 
rum-Athelstan's successor. The fact that he was 
able to demand and obtain such pledges suggests 
that the Anglo-Danish kingdoms had to some 
extent accepted the superiority of Wessex. 

Early in 893 Alfred gathered his fyrd, and 
stationed himself in Kent, between the two viking 
armies, in order that he might keep a watch on 
both. All about him were "the wood fastnesses 
and the water fastnesses," the forest of the 
Andredsweald, and the marshes of the Medway. 
Prevented from seeking the open in force, the 
Danes resorted to a policy of raids and skirmishes. 
"They rode along by the forest in marauding 
bands {hlothum) and troops, skirting the woodland, 
wherever it was 'fyrdless.' And the [West-Saxons] 
also sought them almost every day or night, in 
troops, either from the, fyrd, or from the burhs." 

It is here that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle men- 
tions Alfred's division of the fyrd into a field army 
and a reserve, "besides the men who had to hold 
the burhs.''^ The order of events is obscured by 
the confused arrangement of the Chronicle, the 
one contemporary source, but it was probably at 
this time that Alfred tried to detach Hassten from 
the "Great Army," and win him over by bribes 
and flattery. The wily viking swore oaths and 
gave hostages readily enough, and the King, fol- 

' Supra, Chapter VII. 



398 Alfred the Truthteller [887- 

lowing the precedents of Guthmm and Anaraut, 
lavished gifts on him, and stood godfather to one 
of his sons, while Ethelred of Mercia was the 
sponsor of another. Hagsten then withdrew from 
Kent, but only to throw up earthworks and 
fortify himself at Benfleet in Essex, just across 
the Thames estuary, in the friendly territory of the 
East-Anglian Danes, who did not scruple to break 
their oaths to Alfred. 

The "Great Army" now concentrated all its 
energies on a imited effort, broke up the camp at 
Appledore, and rode northwards, laden with im- 
mense booty, to effect a junction with Hcesten at 
Benfleet, while the ships went round by sea. It 
was probably to avoid the West-Saxon fyrd that 
the Danes chose to march by way of Surrey, 
Hampshire, and Berkshire, but they did not suc- 
ceed in repeating the manoeuvre of 876 and steal- 
ing away from Alfred's army, for the mounted 
jyrd, imder the King's son Edward, ^ outrode them, 
intercepted them at Famham, near the Hampshire 
border of Surrey, and drove them in hurried flight 
over the Thames. They abandoned their spoils, 
crossed the river without waiting to find a ford, 
and took refuge in the little island of Thorney, 
in the Colne, not far from West Drayton.^ Here 

' This detail comes from Ethelwerd. 

=■ Cf. F. M, Stenton, "The Danes at Thorney Island in 893," 
Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xxvii., p. 512. There is still a hamlet called 
Thorney on the Buckinghamshire bank of the Colne, about six 
miles above its junction with the Thames. 



896] The Three Years' War 399 

the fyrd came up with them, and beset them until 
the appointed time of service expired, and supplies 
ran short. 

Alfred, with the second division of the jyrdj 
was on his way to relieve his son, and Edward's 
troops had already turned homewards, when news 
arrived of a fresh and daring movement on the 
part of the enemy. The Northumbrians and East 
Anglians, acting, it may be, in concert with Haes- 
ten and the "Great Army," made a combined 
naval attack on the south and west of England. 
While a fleet of a hundred sail besieged Exeter, 
forty ships beleaguered an unnamed Devonshire 
fort or geweorc "on the north sea." ^ 

The difficulties and anxieties of this complicated 
campaign may have inspired a rhetorical but 
graphic passage in Henry of Huntingdon's de- 
scription of the ravages of Britain's "fourth 
plague," the Danes. ^ When, he says, the King of 
the English marched to fight against them in 
the east, before they could reach the enemy a 
messenger would fly up, crying: "Whither goest 
thou, O King? An immense fleet of heathen men, 
coming from the south, has seized the coasts of 
England, depopulating towns and villages, and 
all is delivered to slaughter and fire. " The same 
day another came running, saying: "Why dost 

' Possibly Cynwit, or, as Professor Oman suggests, Pilton near 
Barnstaple, one of the burhs in the Burghal Hidage. Cf. Eng. 
before the Norm. Conq., p. 485. 

» Bk. v., Prologue, R. S., pp. 138-9. 



400 Alfred the Truthteller [887- 

thou fly, O King? A terrible army has landed in 
eastern England, and unless thou return straight- 
way to meet them, they will think thee a fugitive, 
and slaughter and flames will pursue thee." On 
the same day, or on the morrow, came another 
messenger, who said: "O chiefs, whither are 
you going? The Danes, landing on the northern 
shores, are burning your houses, plundering your 
goods, tossing children on the points of their 
spears, maltreating and carrying off your wives." 
The twelfth-century historian pictures King and 
people weakened and demoralised "in heart and 
hand" by these alarming rumours. The ninth- 
century chronicler, on the contrary, writes that 
when Alfred heard of the attack on Devonshire, 
"he turned westwards towards Exeter, with all the 
jyrd except a very small part, " which he left, under 
Edward, to watch the Danes at Thorney. 

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle now, in trying to 
tell two stories at once, becomes involved, and 
difficult to follow, but Ethelwerd supplies some 
additional details, and, by combining the two 
accounts, the probable course of the campaign 
may be traced. It appears that while Alfred went 
to Devonshire, Edward took over the command 
of the eastern army. The Danes had been de- 
tained at Thorney by the illness of their king, who 
had been seriously wounded at Famham, but they 
eventually carried out their original plan, and 
joined Haesten at Benfleet. 

Ethelwerd says that they were first besieged 



896] The Three Years' War 401 

in their island refuge by Edward and Ethelred of 
Mercia, with the men of London, and that they 
were compelled to give hostages, and to promise to 
leave the kingdom. Reinforced both from the 
west and from London, Edward and Ethelred now 
advanced into Essex, and while Haesten was ab- 
sent on a plunder raid, they fell on the Benfieet 
entrenchments, scattered the defenders, destroyed 
the fortifications, and carried off the treasure, with 
the women and children, to London. Such of the 
ships as they did not take to London or Rochester 
they " broke up, or burned." The contemporary 
chronicler's words were unexpectedly confirmed 
when, in digging the foundations of South 
Benfieet station, remains of charred prows of ships 
were found in the waterway. ^ Hassten's wife and 
his two sons, the godchildren of Alfred and Ethel- 
red, were sent to the King. Moved by pious 
scruples and natural generosity, he restored them 
to their own people, without conditions. 

The shattered remnants of the "Great Army" 
fell back on Shoebury, and there, with the help of 
Hsesten's contingent, threw up a new fort or 
geweorc. The sea has encroached on what was 
once an island earthwork, but fragments of ditch 
and bank still witness to the original strength of 
entrenchments which may with much probability 
be attributed to this period. ' 

» V. C. H., Essex, i., pp. 286-7; "-i P- 206, note 8. 
' Ibid., i., pp. 286-7. 
26 



402 Alfred the Truthteller [887- 

In the west, meantime, Alfred had been success- 
ful in raising the siege of Exeter, but the viking 
ships were still lingering about the coast, and the 
King's forces could not safely leave Devonshire. 
This was the situation when the Danes at Shoe- 
bury, strengthened by reinforcements from East 
Anglia and Northumbria, struck boldly at the 
heart of the West-Saxon kingdom, by the water- 
ways of the Thames and Severn. 

They may have been co-operating with the 
western fleet, or the expedition may have been an 
independent plunder raid. In any case, the event 
showed the efficiency of Alfred's defensive organi- 
sation. If London failed to check the advance of 
the enemy, it at least saved itself from attack, 
while, as the vikings marched along the Thames, 
once the frontier of Alfred's kingdom, now its 
central avenue of approach, and then "up Severn, " 
they found the country guarded, in spite of the 
King's absence, by competent local troops, com- 
manded by the ealdormen Ethelred of Mercia, 
^thelm of Wiltshire, and Ethelnoth of Somerset, 
with the king's thegns from the hurhs "east 
of Parret, west and east of Selwood, north of 
Thames, and west of Severn," and — a tribute to 
Alfred's recent dealings with the Celtic princes — 
with "a part also of the North Welsh people." 
The host thus composed — it is never called afyrd 
—closed in on the Danish army at Buttington, 
" on Severn shore," and blockaded their entrench- 
ments from both sides of the stream. The place 



896] 



The Three Years' War 403 



indicated is probably Buttington ^ in Montgomery- 
shire, not far from Welshpool, where considerable 
earthworks may still be seen. So closely was the 
camp beleaguered that the Danes were forced to 
eat many of their horses, while others died of 
starvation. 

After several weeks of famine, they sallied out 
in despair, and gave battle to the besiegers on the 
east side of the river. The English gained a 
victory, though with the loss of "Ordeh the king's 
thegn, and of many another king's thegn also," 
but the Danes managed to break through the 
blockading lines, and to retreat to their Shoebury 
camp. Then, after placing their women and child- 
ren, their treasure and their ships, in safety, in 
East Anglia, they gathered together their whole 
remaining strength, and dashed "at one stretch," 
riding by day and by night, right across England, 
from east to west, following, perhaps, the Watling 
Street, till they came to the old Roman "City of 
Legions" {Legaceaster) , or Chester, in the Wirral, 
the district between Dee and Mersey. It was still 
half -ruined, a "waste Chester (ceaster)," says the 

* Buttinton, near Tidenham, on the Severn estuary, between 
the Severn and the Wye, has also found supporters, but the 
Montgomeryshire site fits the conditions and the description in 
the Chronicle much better. Cf . C. W. Dymond, F.S.A., in Powys- 
land Club, 1 899-1 900, vol. xxxi. Mr, Dymond says that at 
Buttington near Welshpool the Danes might be easily and 
effectually beset, on the west of the water by a force of observa- 
tion, on the east by a containing force, resting at both ends on 
the river. 



404 Alfred the Truthteller cae?- 

chronicler, but the Danes succeeded in fortifying 
themselves behind the ancient walls, before the 
fyrd, riding in hot pursuit, could come up with 
them. 

The English now deliberately starved out the 
enemy, by harrying the surrounding country, driv- 
ing off the cattle, burning the com, and turning 
their horses loose to graze on the standing crops, 
while they kept a strict watch on the stronghold, 
and cut off all stragglers who ventured outside the 
fortifications. Thus ended the eventful year 893. 

Early in 894 the Danes were constrained by 
famine to evacuate Chester. They raided North 
Wales for supplies, and then turned towards the 
Danelaw. Laden with their spoil, they went 
through the land of the Northumbrians and the 
East Anglians, "so that the fyrd might not reach 
them," until they came to the coimtry of the 
East Saxons, "to an island out in the sea which is 
called Meresig'' — Mersea Island, off the Essex 
coast, between the mouths of the Stour and the 
Blackwater. The fleet which had besieged Exeter 
now also returned home, harrying Sussex, round 
about Chichester, on the way, only to be beaten 
off by the "men of the burh'*; — the town is found 
in the Burghal Hidage, as the centre of a district of 
fifteen himdred hides. Once more the new defen- 
sive system proved effective. The vikings fled, 
with a loss of "many hundreds" of men, and of 
several ships, and the south coast was freed from 
their ravages. 



896] The Three Years' War 405 

In the late autumn, the Danes in Mersea Island 
left their camp, sailed up the Thames, and then 
up the Lea, along the river frontier of the treaty of 
886, and took up winter quarters in an earthwork 
(geweorc) which they raised on the Lea, some 
twenty miles above London. Here they remained 
till the following simimer, and it is significant 
of their changed attitude towards the English that 
there is no record of any attempt on the city, or of 
any harrying of the neighbouring country. The 
Londoners were even strong enough to take the 
offensive. In the summer of 895 they attacked 
the Danish fort, but were repulsed with the loss of 
fotu king's thegns. 

Alfred had now returned from the west, and 
as the harvest season approached, he stationed 
himself with his troops between the camp on 
the Lea and London, that the men of the burh, 
those warlike, yet rustic citizens, might reap 
their crops in security. Not content with a 
mere policy of defence, he devised a scheme 
for ridding the kingdom altogether of the un- 
welcome intruders. 

One day the King rode up the river to recon- 
noitre where the stream might be blocked, so that 
the enemy could not bring out their ships. He 
then ordered two forts (geweorc) to be built, one 
on either bank of the Lea,' probably with some 
sort of bar or obstruction in the channel between 

' Henry of Huntingdon says he divided the stream into three 
channels. 



4o6 Alfred the Truthteller [887- 

them. The Danes only woke to their danger when 
the second fort was in course of construction, too 
late to save the fleet. Leaving the ships to their 
fate, they established their wives and children in 
East Anglia, and marched across country to 
"Quatbridge" on the Severn, not far from Bridge- 
north, ^ where they encamped. The jyrd rode after 
them, while the Londoners triumphantly de- 
stroyed some of the deserted ships, and brought 
all that were still serviceable into harbour "within 
London hurh.'" 

After wintering at Quatbridge, the "Great 
Army," in the summer of 896, at last disbanded. 
Some went to East Anglia, some to Northumbria, 
while the more needy and ambitious procured 
ships, and sailed across the Channel to the Seine, 
where they renewed their former ravages . ' ' Thanks 
be to God," writes the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, 
"the army had not utterly 'broken' the English 
{Angel cyn). They were, indeed, much more 
'broken* in these three years with pestilence 
among cattle and men, and in these three years 
many of the worthiest king's thegns departed this 
life." 

The three years' war was over, but peace was 
not yet. The English Danelaw was restless and 
disturbed, its old viking spirit revived by the 
contact with the pirates of the "Great Army." 
Cnut-Guthred of Northumbria had died in 894. 

' Quatford, in Shropshire on the left bank of the Severn, is 
about two miles south-east from Bridgenorth. 



896] Building the Long Ships 407 

He was succeeded by Sigfred or Siefred, ^ probably 
the Sigeferth piraticus who is described by Ethel- 
werd as devastating the English coast at about 
this time. ^ This seems to be confirmed by Ethel- 
werd's further statement that Ethelnoth, the 
Somerset ealdorman, pursued the Danes from York 
to Stamford, in the country of the Mercians, 
between the river Welland and "the dense wood of 
Kesteven. " Ethelwerd dates a period of great 
discord in Northumbria from the death of King 
Guthfrid in August, 895, the year following this 
raid. It is not certain that this Guthfrid and 
Cnut-Guthred are identical, but it is worth noting 
Simeon of Durham's assertion that King Alfred 
assumed the right of disposing of the Northum- 
brian kingdom after Guthred's death. Simeon 
doubtless exaggerates, but there may possibly 
have been some attempt on Alfred's part to ex- 
ercise sovereign power beyond the Humber. ^ 

It was, perhaps, in connection with these north- 
ern events that, in 896, marauders '' from North- 
umbria and East Anglia harried the south coast of 

' Coins were issued with the names of Cnut and Siefred in 
conjunction. 

" There is absolutely no authority for making him the leader of 
the Exeter expedition in 893, though this is, of course, possible. 
Cf. Keary, B. M.Cat. of A.-S. Coins, i., pp. Hi., Ixvii. It has also 
been suggested that he was the Irish viking Siegferth. 

3 It would be interesting if Alfred's mysterious Lincoln coinage 
could be brought into connection with this period. 

* The Chronicle calls them stcelhergas: bands that "steal" and 
"harry"; cf. supra, Chapter IX., p. 350. 



4o8 Alfred the Truthteller mi- 

Wessex, "with the ships which they had built 
many years before. " To meet these old-fashioned 
vessels Alfred caused his famous "long ships" 
to be built, "fully twice as long as the others," 
some with sixty oars, some with more, swifter and 
steadier than the viking boats, and of a new and 
original pattern, neither Frisian nor Danish in 
build, but "as the King himself thought they 
would be most efficient. "^ As often happens with 
the first trial of a new type of battle-ship, the 
immediate results of this invention were dis- 
appointing. 

At the turn of the year 896 a small fleet of six 
viking ships devastated the Isle of Wight and 
the coasts of Dorset and Devonshire. Alfred 
sent nine of the new ships against them, hoping, 
it seems, to catch them in Southampton Water. 
The Danes had beached three of their boats, and 
the crews had gone ashore. The three remaining 
vessels gave battle to the English. Two were 
taken, and their crews were put to death ; the third 
escaped, with only five men left alive on board. 
The drawbacks of the size and deep draught of the 
"long ships" now appeared. They went agroimd, 
six on one side of the harbour, three on the other 
side, near the three surviving viking boats. At 
low tide the Danes crossed the sands on foot, and 
a fierce battle took place, in which the Danes lost 
a hundred and twenty men, and the West-Saxons, 
according to the Chronicle, only sixty- two "Fris- 

» Supra, Chapter VII. 



896] Building the Long Ships 409 

ians and English,'* while three Frisians are men- 
tioned by name in the list of worthies who fell in 
the fight. With the flood-tide the Danes put 
out to sea, but two of their three vessels were cast 
ashore in a storm, and the crews were led to the 
King at Winchester, and were hanged by his orders. 
The last ship of the little fleet, full of wounded 
men, made good its retreat to East Anglia. 

In this one summer, says the Anglo-Saxon 
chronicler, no less than twenty ships, with their 
crews, were lost on the south coast, but he re- 
frains from stating whether he means Danish or 
English ships, or the total loss on both sides. 

There could certainly be no question that the 
close of the naval campaign of 896 left Wessex 
stronger and more prosperous than at any time 
since the strenuous year 871. The contrast be- 
tween the state of the kingdom at Alfred's acces- 
sion and at the end of his reign was, indeed, too 
marked to escape the notice of historians. William 
of Malmesbury, in writing of Hassten's invasion, 
notes that the Danes, reduced in numbers and dis- 
heartened by their Continental wars, himg back 
from, attacking the English, while Alfred's men 
had become accustomed to bearing arms, and were 
ready both for defence and attack. He is probably 
right in attributing this happy change to the 
personal influence of the King, who never knew 
when he was beaten, and was invincible in his 
persistent courage and energy. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE LAST YEARS OF KING ALFRED. PORT AFTER 
STORMY SEAS. 

897-899 

KING ALFRED'S restless life is usually sup- 
posed to have closed in peace. But this is 
an assumption from the silence of the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle, and there are indications, both 
in Ethelwerd's chronicle and in Alfred's own writ- 
ings, that the Golden Age of his dreams, when 
"no man had heard of the pirate fleet (sciphere), " ^ 
remained to the last an unattained ideal. 

For four years after the death of King Guthfrid 
of Northumbria, says Ethelwerd, "foul bands of 
Northumbrians" caused great discord among the 
English. As Ethelwerd puts Guthfrid's death in 
the course of 895, the four troubled years of which 
he speaks would bring his story up to 899, the 
year in which he places the death of Alfred. The 
prose preface to the Boethius, if it may be accepted 
as contemporary, may also be cited in proof of the 
disturbed character of the time at which it was 

' Boethius, XV., p. 34. 

410 



[897-8991 The Last Years 411 

written, "among various and manifold worldly 
cares," and the same may be said of the pathetic 
passage in the Soliloquies, where Alfred speaks of 
his vain desire for the leisure and retirement 
necessary to the fulfilment of his literary ambi- 
tions. ^ 

The alliance, in the very year of Alfred's death, 
of his rebellious nephew ^Ethelwald with the Danes 
of Northumbria points in the same direction. It 
was, indeed, the great King's military policy rather 
than his peaceful activities that his children Ed- 
ward and Ethelfleed were called on to continue. 
The invasions of "heathen men" from without 
were now replaced by risings of the half-Christian- 
ised Anglo- Danish settlers within the English king- 
doms. The subjection and assimilation of the new 
Scandinavian element in the English population 
became, for the next half-century, the main prob- 
lem of government for the West-Saxon kings. 

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle leaves Alfred in 896 
[897], a stem and ruthless conqueror, sending his 
prisoners of war to the gallows. A more pleasing 
story of his last years is told by William of Malmes- 
bury, who relates how, noting the grace and 
beauty of his little grandson Athelstan, the future 
victor at Brunanburh, he predicted for him a 
happy reign, and invested him with a scarlet cloak, 
a jewelled belt, and a "Saxon sword," with a 
golden scabbard, the insignia, as it seemed to the 
twelfth-century monk, of knighthood, the outward 

* Sol., bk. i., p. 4. 



412 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

tokens, it may be, to ninth-century eyes, of the 
hereditary thegnhood of an cBtheling, or prince 
of the blood royal. 

In 897 [898] the Chronicle records the deaths of 
Heahstan, Bishop of London, and of ^thelm, 
ealdorman of Wiltshire, the King's old friends and 
trusted councillors. In 898 Alfred, rex Saxonum, 
is found granting land in Kent to ealdorman 
*'Sigilm," and consulting at Chelsea with Ethel- 
red and Ethelflasd of Mercia about the fortifica- 
tions of London. But the shades were already 
closing in, and it was, perhaps, a premonition of 
impending change which led him to write in the 
Soliloquies that he would not fear the infirmities 
of the body, were it not for three things: — heavy 
sorrow, death, and inability to satisfy the desire 
for the understanding and knowledge of God.^ 

The annal for 901, in the Parker manuscript of 
the Chronicle, opens with the entry : 

Here departed Alfred son of Athulf [Ethelwulf] 
six nights before All Hallows Mass. He was King 
over all the English people [Angel cyn] except that part 
which was under the power of the Danes, and he held 
the kingdom thirty winters all but one and a half 
[twenty-eight and a half]. And then Edward his 
son took the kingdom. 

A cross in the margin marks the early recognition 

I Cf. Sol, bk. i., pp. 33, 40. The three things that have troubled 
him are parting with friends, either for life or for death, sickness, 
both the known and the unknown, and death. 



899] The Last Years 413 

of the importance of the event, the passing of 
Mlfred Athulfing. 

It seems a pity that the dust of controversy 
should have obscured the dignity of the simple 
contemporary notice of the great King's death, 
but unfortunately scarcely anything in Alfred's 
life has been so keenly disputed as the date of his 
leaving it. The scribal errors of copyists, and the 
irregular and arbitrary nature of the systems of 
chronology used by mediaeval writers, make dis- 
cussion inevitable, and a positive conclusion al- 
most impossible. The balance of probability, 
however, is in favour of October 26, 899, as the 
day of Alfred's death, though October 26, 900, also 
finds many supporters. ^ 

It is, perhaps, indicative of the strictly contem- 
porary character of the original of the Parker 
Chronicle, that the annal which records Alfred's 
death makes no mention of his place of biuial. 
According to a twelfth-century tradition, pre- 
served by William of Malmesbury, his body found 
a temporary resting-place in the cathedral church 
at Winchester, pending the completion of the New 
Minster, to which it was removed in 903. The 
story went that this translation of Alfred's re- 
mains was due to the silly fancies of the cathedral 

I Cf. infra, Note on the Date of King Alfred's Death. For 
the "standard date," Oct. 28, 901, few would now plead, but 
Mr. Anscombe maintains that Oct. 25, 900-901, in a year begin- 
ning in September, is the true ohit of the great King, and that the 
Chronicle's 901, "six nights before All Hallows Mass," represents 
the modern Oct. 25, 900. 



414 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

canons,^ who thought, with "English credulity," 
that the King's ghost walked by night. Be this as 
it may, Ethelwerd in the tenth century described 
Alfred as "resting in peace at Winchester," and 
the Annals of St. Neots, which were probably 
written in the early twelfth century, state that he 
was buried at Winchester, the royal city, with due 
kingly honours, in the church of St. Peter, Prince 
of the Apostles (the New Minster), and that his 
tomb was wrought of most precious porphyry. 

The fourteenth-century compilation called the 
"Book of Hyde" {Liber de Hyda) repeats William 
of Malmesbury's tale of the credulous canons, and 
gives details of the building of the New Minster, 
which Alfred himself had planned. Finished in 
two years, by the pious efforts of King Edward 
and of Grimbald, its first abbot, it stood in close 
proximity to the cathedral, on ground which had 
been bought from the bishop at a mancus of 
gold the foot. It was dedicated in 903 to the Holy 
Trinity, the Blessed Virgin, and Saint Peter and 
St, Paul, but it was commonly called the "New 
Minster," to distinguish it from the older founda- 
tion. "" In 903, also, took place the solemn reception 
of a little band of immigrants from Ponthieu, flying 
from the vikings with the precious relics of the 

' These canons are said to have been introduced into Winches- 
ter by Alfred's brother Ethelred. C£. Milner, Hist, of Winchester, 
2nd ed. vol. i. p. 162. 

^ Cf. also Hyde Register, Hants Record Society, ed. De Gray 
Birch, 1862. 




Imprint, F. F. <fc Co. 



THE STATUE OF ALFRED THE GREAT AT WINCHESTER 
By Hamo Thornycroft, R.A. 



899] The Last Years 415 

Breton Saint Judoc, who became, with Grimbald, 
one of the patrons of the house, while in the same 
year "the most benign king" Edward translated 
the bones and ashes of his father Alfred to the 
"most holy place of his own building, " with great 
ceremony and royal dignity. Ealhswith, Alfred's 
widow, was buried near her husband not many 
years later, ^ and Edward himself was laid beside 
his parents before the first quarter of the tenth 
century was at an end. Grimbald, too, who only 
lived long enough to see the completion of his 
abbey, found a grave within its walls, and was 
reverenced as one of its patron saints. In the 
twelfth century the bodies were removed in state 
to Hyde Abbey, the splendid building established 
by Henry I. just outside the city of Winchester, in 
place of the New Minster, which had been found 
to be inconveniently near the cathedral. 

At the time of the Dissolution of the Monaster- 
ies, Hyde Abbey was so ruthlessly destroyed that 
Camden, the sixteenth-century antiquary, could 
write: "At present the bare site remains, de- 
formed with heaps of ruins, daily dug up to burn 
into lime." In 1788, even these poor remnants 
were swept away, to make room for a New Gaol or 
Bridewell. Three stone coffins which were brought 
to light at this time were recklessly broken up, 
and their contents were scattered. It can only be 
guessed that they once held the mortal remains of 

' She seems to have died either in 902, or in 905; cf. supra. 
Chapter IV. 



4i6 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

Alfred, his wife, and his son Edward the Elder. 
A stone bearing the inscription celfred rex DCCC 
LXXXI, and a few fragments of sculpture, alone 
survive of the stately and beautiful church and 
monastery. "O, glory of this world! Why 
do foolish men, with false tongue, call thee glory, 
when such thou art not?"^ 

Fate, which has obliterated even the memory of 
the site of Alfred's tomb, has yet, by a curious 
chance, preserved his last will and testament, his 
"writing about his inheritance (yrfe-gewrit).^' This 
document, of which the oldest extant copy dates 
from the early eleventh century, is given in the 
"Book of Hyde, "Mn three versions, Anglo-Saxon, 
Latin, and later English. 

The time of its composition has been disputed, 
but it cannot have been earlier than 873, when 
Werferth, mentioned in it as a Bishop, was conse- 
crated to the see of Worcester, or later than 888, 
when Archbishop Ethelred of Canterbury, who 
advised the King about it, died. The name of 
Plegmund, moreover, does not occur in the list of 
legatees, whence it has been argued that it is 
earlier than 884-5, the probable date of his close 
association with King Alfred.^ It may also be 
pointed out that the name of "^Ifiaed" occurs 
in connection with the Wiltshire estate of Damer- 
ham. If, as seems likely, this is Ethelflaed, 

^ Boethius, XXX., § i., p. 68. 

' This book seems to have been compiled after 1354. 
3 Stevenson, Asser, pp. Ixvii., 303; note on c. 77, 10. 



8991 The Last Years 417 

Alfred's daughter, it may be suggested that this 
will, not the first which the King had made, was 
drawn up at the time of her marriage to Ethelred 
of Mercia, probably about 884, or a little later, 
and that an estate at Damerham formed part of 
her marriage portion. ^ 

Alfred's will is deeply interesting and suggestive, 
from many points of view. It shows the King in 
his family relations, as husband, father, kinsman, 
and lord, disposing of his inherited family lands, 
of his "bookland, " and of his personalty. It 
shows him, too, consulting with his witan about 
the interpretation of his father's will, asking their 
counsel, and obtaining their witness for his own 
disposition of his property. 

When death had swept away many of his kins- 
men, and changed his circumstances, he thought 
it well to cancel his former bequests, and to make 
a new arrangement for the future. The King "by 

• This suggestion is rendered more probable by the fact that 
in the tenth century, another royal lady "Ethelflsed of Damer- 
ham," King Edmund's second queen, held land at Damerham, 
which she bequeathed to Glastonbury Abbey. She also held lands 
at Lambourn, Cholsey, and Reading. It is interesting to note that 
Alfred left the Berkshire "hams" of Lambourn and Wantage 
to his wife. In his will Alfred bequeathed three "hams" to his 
youngest daughter, and two to his second daughter, but only one 
to the eldest, Ethelflasd. This looks as if there might have been 
some previous "settlement" on her. Ethelred of Mercia has 
also a special bequest in the will, though he is not described as the 
King's son-in-law. Alfred seems still to have kept some interest 
in Damerham, and in later days the queen evidently did not 
hold it all, as King Edred also left lands there by will. Cf. Two 
Sax. Chron., ii., p. 147. 

27 



41 8 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

God's gift," then, with the advice of the Arch- 
bishop, and the witness of all the West-Saxon 
witan, takes thought for his soul, and for the 
inheritance which God and his forefathers had 
given him, and declares his will concerning the 
distribution of his heritage after his death. He 
recapitulates the events whereby this heritage 
has been concentrated in his hands, mentions the 
provisions of his father's will, and then passes to 
his own bequests. 

To his eldest son Edward he leaves lands in the 
west country, in Cornwall and Somerset, includ- 
ing Wedmore, and "all the booldand which 
Leofheah held," with other estates in Wiltshire, 
Hampshire, and Surrey. To the "households" 
(hiwum) at Cheddar, a royal vill, he commends 
Edward, as lord, though he admits their right, 
previously recognised, to choose what lord they 
will. His bookland in Kent, at Hurstboume in 
Hampshire, and at Chisledon in Wiltshire, he 
gives to Winchester, in accordance with his father's 
grant, together with the property at Hurstbourne 
which he himself had formerly entrusted to Ecgulf , 
perhaps the " horse- thegn " whose death is recorded 
in 896 [897]. 

His youngest son receives estates in the south, 
with the old family property at Meon in Hamp- 
shire, * and lands in the west, in Wiltshire, Dorset, 
Somerset, and Devonshire, "all that I have among 
the Welsh (on Wealcynne) except Triconshire [part 

^ Cf. supra, Chapter II., p. 30. 



899] The Last Years 419 

of Cornwall]," writes Alfred, with an interest- 
ing recognition of the Celtic character of the 
western counties. His eldest daughter has the 
Somerset "ham" at Wellow, to the second are 
bequeathed two Hampshire estates, and to the 
third, Chippenham, and two other "hams" in 
Wiltshire. His nephews, Ethelred's sons iEthelm 
and ^thelwald, are provided for by ample estates 
in Sussex, Hampshire, and Surrey, and his kinsman 
Osferth, by lands in Sussex, while his wife Ealhs- 
with has the three " hams " of Lamboum, Wantage, 
Alfred's birthplace, and Ethandun, the scene of 
his victory over Guthrum. 

The King's personal property he also distributes 
among his kinsmen and followers: five hundred 
poimds to each of his sons ; one hundred pounds to 
his wife, and to each of his three daughters; a 
himdred mancuses (about £12.10.0) apiece to 
his ealdormen, and the same to his nephews and 
Osferth; a sword worth a hundred mancuses to 
ealdorman Ethelred, and "to the men who follow 
me, to whom I now give gifts at Eastertide," two 
hundred pounds, duly shared among them. To the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, a hundred mancuses, 
and the like sum to each of the Bishops Esne,^ 
Werferth, and "him at Sherborne." 

Two hundred pounds are further devoted to 
charity, on behalf of the King and his father, and 
the friends for whom they were accustomed to 
intercede: fifty poimds to the priesthood, fifty 

' Unidentified. 



420 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

to "God's poor servants," fifty to poor laymen, 
fifty to the church in which the King is laid to rest. 
"I am in nowise certain," he candidly adds, "if 
there be so much money (feoh), or if there be more; 
but I think it is so. If it be more, let it be shared 
among those to whom I have bequeathed money, 
and I will that my ealdormen and my thenigmenn 
. . . distribute it thus. " Then follow injunctions 
to carry out his father's will as far as possible, and 
to pay his own debts, and the long document closes 
with the famous provisions regulating the succes- 
sion to his bookland, and securing the liberty to 
choose a lord which he had granted to certain 
privileged persons and communities. ^ 

In Alfred's Laws he had decreed that bookland 
should not be alienated from the kindred of the 
owner, if the original "book" or charter forbade 
such alienation. Here, in granting bookland, he 
stipulates that the "men" who receive it shall not 
leave it away from the royal family, and that in 
the event of their dying childless it shall revert to 
his house, in the male line, "on the weapon side, " 
if possible, in accordance with the ancient custom. 
His own gifts to women, "on the spindle side," 
are, however, to hold good, and he expressly re- 
serves his right to grant land either to "women's 
hands" or to "weapon hands," though his kins- 
men are enjoined to indemnify any aggrieved male 
claimants. 

'Cf. supra, Chapter VIII. Liebermann, Gesetze, ii., ii.; 
Bocland, 13; Bosworth-ToUer, A.-S, Diet., Supplement: cyrelif^ 



899] The Last Years 421 

The evidence of Alfred's will confirms what 
Asser says about his family. His two sons, Ed- 
ward and Ethelwerd, and his three daughters, 
Ethelflffid, Ethelgifu, and Elfthryth, were worthy 
descendants of a great father. Ethelfised and 
Edward seem to have inherited his practical 
ability. Both, one as "Lady of the Mercians," 
the other as his father's successor, left names 
famous in English history. Ethelwerd, the young- 
est child, trained in learning and scholarship 
in the court-school,'' and Ethelgifu, who took the 
veil, and became the first abbess of Shaftesbury, 
were the heirs of Alfred's intellectual and literary 
tastes. Elfthryth, the wife of Baldwin II. of 
Flanders,^ renewed and carried on an old alliance. 
With her sons, Arnulf and Adelolf, who was 
probably named after King Ethelwulf, she is 
found in 918 granting lands in Kent to the Abbey 
of St. Peter at Ghent. Asser also mentions other 
children who died in infancy. * 

It is one of the little intimate touches which 
strengthen belief in the genuineness of Asser's 
book, that he describes the different methods of 
education adopted with the elder children and 
with the youngest, Ethelwerd,'' and yet, appar- 
ently, knows little of their later history. Though 
Ethelflffid was already married when he wrote, 

' Florence of Worcester says that he died in 922, and was buried 
at Winchester. 

' Son of Baldwin I. and of Alfred's step-mother Judith. 

3 He breaks off abruptly with the words " whose number 
is ... " ^ Cf. supra, Chapter VIII., p. 286. 



422 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

Elfthryth was still a girl in her father's house, 
and Ethelgifu was a nun, indeed, but not yet an 
abbess. William of Malmesbury, in relating Ed- 
ward the Elder's mythical love-story, makes him 
meet his future bride at the house of his old nurse, 
the wife of a villicus or reeve : an incident which 
suggests that the royal children may have been 
brought up on the King's country farms, in whole- 
some rustic fashion. In later days, Edward him- 
self seems to have entrusted the education of his 
son Athelstan to Ethelflaed and Ethelred of Mercia. 

At the opening of the tenth century, then, the 
figure of King Alfred appears, for a brief space, 
clear and distinct, before the distorting mists of 
legend and tradition gather about it. If now, 
sweeping aside all these later accretions, we try 
to see the King as his contemporaries saw him, 
and as he has revealed himself in his writings, 
the conventional perfection of "the First Founder 
of the English Monarchy" gives place to some- 
thing warmer and more human, a living personal- 
ity, a character of native simplicity and honesty, 
disciplined by experience into a rare nobility and 
purity. 

Of Alfred's personal appearance there is no 
record except Asser's stereotyped phrases^ de- 
scribing his childish beauty. The busts on his 
coins, even if they could be taken as attempts at 
portraiture, are too rude to be much help, though 
it may, perhaps, be inferred from them that the 

' C. 22, 5. 




° z 



uTa 




899] The Last Years 423 

King was beardless, with rather long hair, fram- 
ing a regular-featured face. His delicate, pain- 
wracked body probably looked frail enough, yet 
he was able to hunt, and fight, and to bear hard- 
ships which might have discouraged stronger men. 
His early fear of blindness, with the frequent re- 
currence in his writings of references to the value 
of clear vision, may imply both that his own eye- 
sight was imperfect, and that the pleasures of 
sight specially appealed to him. The difficulty in 
reconstructing Alfred's physical characteristics 
is, however, less to be regretted, since he himself 
desired chiefly to be remembered by his good 
works. This was the wish of an active lover of his 
kind, the ambition of a man who, for all his ideal- 
ism, was determined to leave some material traces 
of his passage through the world. 

His mind seems to have been constructive rather 
than creative. The scientific spirit, the intense 
desire for knowledge and love of truth, combined 
with the instinct for applying knowledge to practi- 
cal ends, were stronger in him than even his feeling 
for beauty, or his religious mysticism. Yet he had 
the mediaeval fondness for parable and simile. All 
to him was symbolical — the sea and the shipping, 
the starry sky, the common incidents of rural life, 
the routine of the court, or the labour of the 
workshop. His imagination was quick and vivid, 
but his intellectual powers were, probably, richer 
and fuller than his emotional capacity. He speaks 
much of friendship, but little of earthly love. He 



424 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

touches high passion only when he faces the mys- 
teries of the spiritual world, when he asks himself, 
with fear and searchings of heart, what he is, and 
whether his mind and soul are "mortal and perish- 
able, or ever-living and eternal." 

What would I care for life [he writes] if I knew 
nothing? What is the highest wisdom, other than 
the highest good? Or what is the highest good, 
except that every man in this world love God as much 
as he loveth wisdom? ... So much as he loveth 
wisdom, so much doth he love God. ^ 

Here, surely, in this burning love of truth, lies 
the clue to Alfred's character, and much of the 
secret of his enduring charm. By his sincerity of 
purpose and clearness of spiritual vision he pene- 
trated below the changing surface to the eternal 
heart of the things that never grow old . He touched 
the hidden springs of life and death, of wonder and 
fear, of joy and sorrow, and, by virtue of his sym- 
pathy and humanity, he won the love of his people, 
and has been remembered for a thousand years 
with a familiar affection and a straightforward 
unromantic esteem which are a fitting tribute 
to the "wise king," "Alfred the truth-teller" 
{^Ijredus veridicus) , "England's darling. ""^ 

^ Sol., bk. ii., p. 58. 

" Cf . infra, Chapter XII. The epithet veridicus, " truth-tell- 
ing," comes from Asser, c. 13: Quod a domino meo Alfredo, 
Angul-saxonum rege veredico . . . audivi. Cf. Annals of 
St. Neots, sub anno 900, a passage incorporated by Parker in 



899] The Last Years 425 

King Alfred has been classed with Canute, 
William the Conqueror, Henry II., and Edward L, 
as one of the "conscious creators of England's 
greatness."^ If this be so, his closest affinity is 
with Henry II. Like him, he was an adapter 
rather than an originator. Like him, too, he modi- 
fied foreign ideas, even while accepting them, and 
gave them an English dress which practically 
transformed them. If he saved England for the 
English by repelling the flood of Danish invasion, 
and setting bounds to it in the Danelaw, he saved 
it again by preserving the ancient laws and cus- 
toms, and giving them a permanent literary shape, 
in the vernacular tongue. 

Yet again, though he borrowed from other 
civilisations, he did not slavishly follow either 
Prankish or Scandinavian models. He selected 
and combined, and gave his subjects what he 
thought needful for them, in a language which 
they could understand. Building on the founda- 
tions which Ine of Wessex had laid, he estab- 
lished a tradition of government which was 
carried on by his descendants: — a policy of cen- 
tralisation, wherein, nevertheless, the king and 
witan worked through the local communities of 

his edition of Asser : Mlfredus veridicus, vir in hello per om.nia 
strenuissimus, etc. In its English form of "truth-teller" it was 
early applied to King Alfred. Cf. Tennyson: Ode on the Death of 
the Duke of Wellington; Longfellow: The Discoverer of the North 
Cape. 

' Stubbs, Introduction to Gesta Henrici Secundi (Benedictus 
Abbas), R. S., ii., p. xxxiii. ff. 



426 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

the land, and the monarchy, balanced by a power- 
ful aristocracy, rested on a broad basis of popular 
support. 

Elaborated by Edward the Elder and Athelstan, 
by Edmund and Edgar and Ethelred II., the sys- 
tem was strong enough to withstand the double 
shock of the Danish and Norman conquests of the 
eleventh century. If Alfred had fallen at Ethan- 
dun, it can hardly be doubted that England would 
have become Scandinavian, and her lot would have 
been cast with the northern European nations, 
while, if Alfred's legal "Code" had never been 
compiled, the Latin element would, almost inevi- 
tably, have predominated in English law. But for 
Alfred, too, English might never have become a 
literary language. He rescued, restored, and trans- 
mitted the scattered fragments of past achieve- 
ment, historical, intellectual, and political. 

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Laws, and the 
four great translations are his abiding monuments. 
His very timidity, and fear of rash innovation, 
worked for the good of his kingdom, and secured 
continuity of social development, where a bolder 
reformer would have completely broken with the 
old order. For these services alone the English- 
speaking and English-governed races owe him 
lasting gratitude, but even deeper is their debt to 
the English King who first lent the weight of a 
great name and a stainless reputation to the fine 
theory that public office is a sacred trust, and 
that the privileges of high place are only jus- 



899] The Last Years 427 

tified by unswerving devotion to its attendant 
duties. 

Thy true Nobility of Mind and Blood, 
O Warlike Alfred, gave thee to be good. 
Goodness Industrious made thee; Industry 
Got thee a name to all Posterity.^ 

Note on the Date of King Alfred's Death 

(Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xiii., p. 71; Two Saxon Chron., ii., 
p. 112; British Numismatic Journal, series I, vol. iv., p. 241 ff., 
vol. v., p. 381 ff.; AthencBum, 1898, Nos. 3672-5, 3688, 3690, 
3693; 1900, Nos. 3804, 3810-11, 3814, 3817; 1901, Nos. 3819-20, 
3870. F. M. Stenton, .^thelwerd's Account of the Last Years 
of King Alfred's Reign. Eng. Hist. Rev. vol. xxiv. p. 79.) 

The era from which the Anglo-Saxons computed the 
beginning of the year in the ninth century is uncertain, 
though there is some evidence for a calendar year 
beginning either at "midwinter," or Christmas Day, 
December 25th, or on "the harvest equinox, " Septem- 
ber 24th, which seems to have been the date re- 
cognised by Bede.^ 

' Nobilitas innata tihi prohitatis honorem 
{Armipotens Alfrede) dedit; prohitasgue labor em; 
Perpetuumque labor nomen. . . . 
Henry of Huntingdon, translated by Sir John Spelman. Cf. 
the still earlier translation in Holinshed, Hist, of England, bk. vi., 
c. xvi.: 

" Nobilitie by birth to thee (O Alfred strong in armes) 

Of goodness hath the honor given, and honor toilesome harmes. 

And toilesome harmes an endelesse name ..." 

' This would be the date used for the beginning of the year by 

annalists who employed the " Caesarean Indiction. " Those who 

employed the Greek Indiction would begin the year on September 

1st. The Old English year, before the time of Bede, seems to have 



428 Alfred the Truthteller [897- 

Another possible New Year's Day was the Annun- 
ciation, or Lady Day, March 25th, preceding the 
Christmas of the JuHan year/ Thus the year 901 
might begin, according to modern reckoning, with 
March, 900, with September, 900, or with December, 
900. 

When it is remembered that the annalistic and 
ecclesiastical years might have different beginnings, 
and that the regnal years did not correspond to either, 
while the regnal year itself might date from the king's 
accession, or from his coronation, some idea may be 
formed of the complexity of the chronological problem. 

Alfred's death has been assigned to three different 
days in October, the 25th, the 26th, and the 28th, and 
to three separate years, 899, 900, and 901. For the 
day of the month, the evidence is strongly in favour 
of October 26th, "six nights before All Hallows 
Mass" (November ist). This is the date given by the 

begun with "midwinter," and both the tenth-century homilist 
^Ifric and the "Old English Martyrology" begin the year with 
Christmas Day, December 25th. Mr. Plummer believes that 
the reckoning from Christmas prevails " throughout the Alfredian 
Chronicle, i. e., up to about 892" {Two Sax. Chron., ii., p. cxl). 
Mr. Stevenson shows that there is evidence in the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle for a year beginning before December 25th {Eng. Hist. 
Rev., vol. xiii., p. 71 flf.). Mr. Anscombe asserts that the Old 
English year in the south of England began on September ist 
{British Numismatic Journal, series I, vol. iv., 1907, p. 241 ff.; 
vol. v., 1908, p. 381 ff.: "The Anglo-Saxon Computation of 
Historic Time in the Ninth Century"). 

^ This was the "Pisan Calculus" {Calculus Pisanus). The 
"Florentine Calculus" {Calculus Florentinus) reckoned from the 
Annunciation after the Christmas of the Julian year. In the one 
case, the year began nine months and some days earlier than with 
us at the present time. In the other it began two months and 
twenty-five days later. 



899] The Last Years 429 

Parker Chronicle (K) and by the two Abingdon 
Chronicles (B and C). It is repeated, in the Roman 
form, the 7th of the Kalends of November, by the 
Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles (D and E), 
by the bilingual Canterbury Chronicle (F) , and by the 
Annals of St. Neots, The King's obit is also entered 
under the same date in a tenth-century calendar, in the 
"Psalter of King ^thelstan, " and in two metrical cal- 
endars of the eleventh century, ^ while in four manu- 
scripts of the Chronicle the death of King Athelstan, 
on October 27th (6 Kal. Nov.), 940 is said to have 
occurred "forty years all but a day"* after Alfred's 
death. 

Against this full and early evidence for October 
26th, Florence of Worcester's date, October 28th (5 
Kal. Nov.) cannot stand, ^ while Ethelwerd's statement 
that Alfred died on the seventh day before All Saints, 
October 25th, is unsupported by contemporary 
authority.'' 

The ancient metrical calendars, then, may be held 
worthy of credence when, under October 26th (7 Kal. 
Nov.) they inscribe the line : 

jElfred rex ohiit septenis et quogue amandus. 
(Alfred the King, who died on the seventh, is 
still to be loved.) 

^ Hampson, Medii Mvi. Calendarium, i., pp. 395, 416. Steven- 
son, E. H. R., vol xiii., p. 71. 

^ In the Parker MS. the original reading is 941, and "forty- 
one years, " etc. Ethel werd agrees with this. 

3 It is accepted by Lappenberg, Pauli, and Professor Freeman 
(Did. Nat. Biog, art. Alfred). 

■< Mr. Anscombe's arguments {op. cit.) for October 25th are 
based on the calculation of the " vespertinal " day, from vespers, 



430 Alfred the Truthteller I897- 

The question of the year of Alfred's death is less 
easy of solution. The Parker Chronicle gives 901, and 
is followed by all the other manuscripts, by Florence 
of Worcester, and by the Book of Hyde Abbey {Liber 
de Hyda), the place of the King's burial. On the other 
hand, the passage in the Chronicle which places 
Athelstan's death in 940, forty years after the death of 
his grandfather, implies that Alfred died in 900, and 
this is the date in the Annals of St. Neots, in the 
Annates CambricB, and in two Winchester charters 
issued in 900, "in the year when King Alfred died"; 
"when the King died, and King Edward his son took 
the kingdom."* 

Since the chronology of the Chronicle at this period 
is untrustworthy, and the insertion of a second annal 
for 891, for the purpose of describing the comet of 
that year, appears to have pushed the events of 892 
into 893, it has been conjectured that the annals 
continue for some time to be a year in advance of the 
true date, and that 901 may therefore be read 900. 

This, however, is far from certain, and in any case 
the sequence of the chronology is broken here, as the 
entry for 901 immediately follows the annal for 898. 
Perhaps the strongest objection to the 900 theory is 
the fact that the Parker Chronicle says that Alfred 
reigned for twenty-eight and a half years, and as he 
undoubtedly came to the throne "after Easter" in 
871, this would make 899 the year of his death. 

Mr. Stevenson has argued with great force and 

about 4 P.M., to vespers. This would put Alfred's death in the 
night of October 25th-26th. L'Art de Verifier les Dates gives 
October 25, 900. 

' Birch, Cart. Sax., ii., pp. 234, 240, Nos. 590, 594. 



899] The Last Years 431 

probability in support of this year. It is the date 
assigned to Alfred's death by Simeon of Durham, ^ by 
the Lindisfarne Annals, and by Ethelwerd/ all of 
them, apparently, resting on an earlier northern 
source, a significant fact, when the special association 
of Alfred with St. Cuthbert is recalled. This date 
is strikingly confirmed by a rule {computus) for calcu- 
lating the year of the Incarnation, which occurs in 
a tenth-century manuscript. Illustrating from the 
"present year, which is the thirteenth year of Edward, 
King of the Saxons," it shows this year to be 912, 
which throws back his accession and his father's death 
to 899. 

Ethelwerd, moreover, says that Edward the Elder 
was crowned on Whitsunday (June 8), 900,^ a date 
which cannot be reconciled with Alfred's supposed 
death in the following October. Nor does the date 
899 necessarily conflict with the passage in the 
Chronicle on Athelstan's death, or with the two charters 
which make 900 the year of Edward's accession, for 
his regnal year would run from October, 899, to Oc- 
tober, 900, and the fortieth year of his reign would 
be 939-940- 

'He gives it three times: in the Hist. Dunelm. Ecclesice and 
the Historia Regum, R. S., i., p. 71, ii., pp. 92, 120. 

* He puts Guthfrid's death in 895, then mentions the four 
years of "discord" (895-899), and adds that Alfred died in eodem 
anno, i. e., the last year of "discord," 899. 

3 When 900 years were fulfilled from the coming of Christ. 
In the course of the looth year from the accession of Egbert, 
which Ethelwerd puts in 800. Mr. Anscombe contends that 
these passages in Ethelwerd 's chronicle mean that the coronation 
took place in 901 ; cf. references ut supra. Too little is known about 
Alfred's coronation to base any argument on the assumption that 
his regnal years were calculated from it. 



432 Alfred the Truthteller [897-899] 

Here, then, the controversy may be left, undeter- 
mined, but with Mr. Stevenson's theory in the as- 
cendant, that October 26, 899, was the date of King 
Alfred's death. ^ If, however, it could be satisfactorily 
proved that the Anglo-Saxons in the ninth century 
began their year either with the 25th of March pre- 
ceding the Christmas of the Julian calendar, or with 
September 24th, many of the chronological difficulties 
would disappear, and it might be shown that Alfred 
died on October 25th-26th, in 899, according to mod- 
ern reckoning, but in 900 according to the contem- 
porary system of computation. 

This would still leave unexplained the date 901 
in the Chronicle, but it would harmonise almost all 
the other discrepancies in the early accounts of the 
death of Alfred, and the accession and coronation of 
Edward the Elder. 

' There is however some evidence for October 26, 900. 




DO M I N O 

MEO VENERABILI 

P I I S S 1 M O CLV E OMNI 

BRITANNIA INSVL 

CHRISTIANORVM 

R E C T O R I 

^ L F R E 

ANGLORVM SAXONV 
R E G I 



V M 

m 



M 



JBi^iBat-AA-. ^1^ ■,...J^, 



HEAD OF ALFRED 

Over the Door of the Hall of Brasenose College, Oxford 

From Wise's Asser, 1722 

Also figured in Spelman's Aelfredi Magni Vita, 1678 



CHAPTER XII 

THE MYTH OF KING ALFRED 

THE King Alfred of English legend shows pale 
and lifeless beside the heroic Charlemagne of 
the French chansons de gestes, or the mysterious 
Arthur of Celtic romance. The elements of pity 
and terror are lacking in his story, as his people 
told it after his death. He is no unconquered 
warrior, who can be compared to Odin the thunder- 
god, no high-souled victim of a lost cause and a 
tragic love. His life of quiet virtue and unobtru- 
sive success was not brilliant or passionate enough 
to attract the court poets and chroniclers. The 
influences which went to the creation of his myth 
were chiefly popular, ecclesiastical, or academic, 
and the victor of Ashdown and Ethandun was 
forgotten in the fame of the scholar-king, the 
friend of the poor, and the favourite of the saints. 
The tradition of Alfred's wisdom, which eventu- 
ally made of him an English Solomon, may be 
traced in the century immediately following his 
death, in the appeal to his judgment as to a 
standard,^ in the reference to his laws as "the 

' Cf. supra, Chapter VII., p. 256. 
28 433 



434 Alfred the Truthteller 

doombook, " a recognised authority,^ in the name 
of "the wise king," given to him in one of the 
charters of Ethelred IL, and in the eulogy pro- 
nounced upon him by Ethelwerd, himself a mem- 
ber of the royal house: "The magnanimous King 
Alfred, the immovable pillar of the West-Saxons, 
a man full of justice, keen in arms, learned in 
speech, imbued above all with the divine writ- 
ings." 

The popular tradition was also, in all likelihood, 
^growing up during the tenth century; the people, 
it can hardly be doubted, were already beginning 
to tell fireside tales of good King Alfred, and to 
point out the scenes of his sufferings and victories, 
though there is no record of such legends till 
after the Norman Conquest. The renewal of Dan- 
ish invasion in the last quarter of the tenth cent- 
ury seems to have dimmed the memory of the 
earlier struggle with the vikings, while Edgar's 
reign of peace and good government came to be 
regarded as England's Golden Age. 

It was not until the opening of the twelfth cent- 
ury that interest in early English history revived, 
as part of the general literary activity of the time. 
Florence of Worcester, who died in 1118, compiled 
his work mainly from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
and from Asser. How fully he appreciated the 
greatness of Alfred is seen in the fine tribute which 
he pays to the "King of the Anglo-Saxons, the 
son of the most pious King Ethelwulf ": 

^ Ibid., pp. 212, 251. 



The Myth of King Alfred 435 

famous, warlike, victorious; the diligent provider 
for widows and children, for orphans and the poor; the 
most skilful of Saxon poets, most dear to his people, 
affable to all, and most generous; endowed with pru- 
dence, fortitude, justice, and temperance; most patient 
in the infirmity from which he constantly suffered; a 
most discreet investigator in the execution of justice; 
most watchful and devout in the service of God. 

Henry of Huntingdon, too, writing in the first half 
of the twelfth century, thinks Alfred's laborious 
reign worthy to be sung in verse, ^ and dismisses 
him in his summary of the lives of the early kings 
as one of whom nothing could be said briefly, 
because he did so many admirable deeds. 

In the twelfth century, also, that period of 
monastic revival, the name of Alfred was indis- 
solubly associated with the English saints Neot 
and Cuthbert; his works were copied and read; 
his reputation as a writer and lawgiver grew 
apace, and the obscure remembrance of his history 
still lingering in local gossip took literary form in 
folk-tales inserted in chronicles, in saints' lives, 
and in homilies. 

The most famous of these tales, the story of 
"Alfred and the cakes," is first found in the 
Annals of St. Neots, and in three lives of St. Neot, 
two in Latin, and the third, a homily intended to 
be read on St. Neot's day, in Anglo-Saxon. All 
three lives, in their present shape, appear to 

' Cf. his panegyrics in verse on Ethelflaed, Lady of the Mer- 
cians, on Edgar, Henry I,, etc. 



436 Alfred the Truthteller 

belong to the twelfth century, but they probably 
embody older material, and they may go back to 
tenth-century originals, which incorporated still 
earlier oral traditions. ^ 

The fact that the English homily gives what 
seems to be a folk-tale, of a fox which stole St. 
Neot's shoe, somewhat strengthens the probability 
that the story of the cakes is also derived from a 
popular source. That old familiar story is worth 
retelling, in what is, apparently, its earliest Eng- 
lish form. Its broad humour, its crude contrasts 
of good and evil fortune, the sudden transition 
from the squalour of the peasant's hut to the glory 
of the heavenly vision, are like a scene in a medi- 
aeval Morality, and have appealed to the English 
imagination for at least nine hundred years. ^ 

' The Annals copy from a life which is no longer extant ; it 
probably dated from the eleventh century, as the Annals were 
compiled in the early twelfth century. There are two separate 
Latin lives of the twelfth century in existence, on which the later 
copies, adaptations, and paraphrases are based. The Anglo- 
Saxon homily has been attributed by Professor Wulker to ^If ric, 
but this is rendered practically impossible by the ignorance of 
tenth-century history shown in the blunder which makes St. 
Neot, who is said to have died before 878, the contemporary of 
Bishop ^Ifheah of Winchester. Of the two Winchester bishops 
of that name, one held the see from 934 to 951, and the other 
from984 to 1005. Cf. Stevenson, 4 wer, p. 256 fif.; Flummer, Life 
and Times, p. 54 S. 

' St. Neot, the somewhat mythical Cornish anchorite, whose 
body was first laid to rest with St. Gueriir in Cornwall, at the 
place now called St. Neot, afterwards became the patron of the 
Huntingdonshire monastery of St. Neots, which acquired his 
relics some time in the early eleventh century. After the Norman 
Conquest this house was attached as a cell to the monastery of 



The Myth of King Alfred 437 

In the English homily, then, Alfred visits St. 
Neot in his Cornish retreat, "for his soul's need." 
The saint foretells his future trials, and urges him 
to turn from his sins, and to make offerings to 
Romeburh, and to Pope Martin (Marinus), who 
rules the English school at Rome. Alfred receives 
Neot's blessing, and obeys his behests. The saint 
dies, and Guthrum the heathen King arrives in 
"the eastern part of the Saxon land {Sexlandes)" 
with his bloodthirsty host. 

When King Alfred . . . learnt that the army (here) 
was so strong, and so near to England, he straightway 
for fear took to flight, and forsook all his warriors and 
his captains Qieretogen), and all his people, treasure, 
and treasure-chests. . . . He went skulking by hedge 
and lane, by wood and field, till by God's guidance he 
came safely to Athelney, and took refuge in a swine- 
herd's house, and obeyed him and his evil wife very 
willingly. It chanced on a day that the swineherd's 
wife heated her oven, and the King sat by it, warming 
himself at the fire, for they knew not that he was the 
King. Then the evil wife waxed wroth of a sudden, 
and said to the King, in angry mood : "Turn the loaf, 
so that it does not burn ; I see every day what a lusty 
eater thou art." He straightway obeyed the evil 
wife as needs he must. 

The "good king" then pleads to God for mercy, 

Le Bee Hellouin in Normandy. It w?s important and thriving 
in the twelfth century, and may well have wished to connect its 
patron with the pious King Alfred, and to exalt St. Neot's fame 
at the expense of some blackening of Alfred's character. — Steven- 
son, Asser, pp. cii., cix., 256 ff., 296 flf.; Diet. Nat. Biog., Neot. 



438 Alfred the Truthteller 

and his prayer is heard. All falls out as St. Neot 
foretold. The saint appears in a dream, shining 
brightly, and comforts the King, saying: "I go 
before thee, follow thou after me, together with 
thy people." Alfred now defeats Guthrum, who 
is baptised, and returns to "his own country." 
Alfred's kingdom increases, and his fame spreads 
far and wide, for in knowledge of the divine 
writings "he surpassed bishops and mass-priests 
and archdeacons {high deacons), and Christianity 
flourished well in those good times." The King, 
moreover, wrote many books, concludes the homi- 
list, and within the space of two and twenty years 
he forsook this earthly life for the life eternal: "so 
God granted it to him for his righteousness." 

The Annals of St. Neots and the Latin lives tell 
the same tale with elaborations. In the Annals, 
which refer to the "life of the holy father Neot," 
the swineherd becomes a neatherd (vaccarius), 
and Alfred, as he sits by the fire, busies himself 
with his bow and arrows, "and other instruments 
of war," and forgets the loaves. The "unhappy 
housewife" runs up and turns them, and rates the 
"most unconquered king" in Latin hexameters: 

Heus homo 
Urere, quos cernis, panes gyrare moraris, 
Cum nimium gaudes hos manducare calentes? 
(Canst set and see the Bread burn thus thou sot 
And canst not turn what thou so well lov'st hot?)^ 

' Sir John Spelman's seventeenth-century translation. Cf . Dr. 
Giles' rendering, in Somersetshire dialect: 



The Myth of King Alfred 439 

An account of Alfred's youthful tyranny and 
lack of sympathy with his people follows, and St. 
Neot, his "kinsman," duly rebukes his sins, and 
prophesies impending misfortunes. He subse- 
quently appears to the King in his time of need, 
and consoles him, and finally, the night before the 
battle of Ethandun, he promises to lead the Eng- 
lish to victory on the morrow. 

The earlier of the two Latin lives is interspersed 
throughout with fragments of verse, and exhibits, 
as the sixteenth-century antiquary Leland said 
of it, an "affectation of eloquence rather than the 
honest fidelity of history. " St. Neot, who is him- 
self of royal East-Anglian blood, here threatens his 
kinsman Hceluredus, King of the English, with 
the pains of hell, if he persists in his immoderate 
tyranny, and bids him send to Rome to ask Pope 
Marinus to free the English school. Alfred, deeply 
moved, obeys, and receives a piece of the true 
cross from the Pope. St. Neot dies. The heathen 
tyrant Gytrum invades England. He hears from 
fugitives of Alfred's wealth, and learns where he 
intends to winter. The Athelney incident is then 
introduced; the name Mthelinga-ig is explained to 
mean the "Isle of Princes," Clitonum Insula;^ the 
King seeks hospitality from a swineherd (subulcus) 

" Cas'n thee mind the ka-aks, man, and doosen zee 'em burn? 
I'm boun thee's eat 'em vast enough, az zoon az tiz the turn. " 

{Six Old Eng. Chron., p. 60.) 
' Cf. Stevenson, op. cit., p. 259, note 4. Mr. Stevenson regards 
"isle of the princes " as " a very unlikely Old English local name. " 



440 Alfred the Truthteller 

and stays with him for some days; he is scolded 
by the swineherd's wife in the same hexameters 
as in the Annals of St. Neots, but he turns the 
bread himself, and watches it till it is ready. He 
then goes forth, and builds the fort at Athelney. 
St. Neot appears, and encourages him. Alfred 
gathers his men by the sound of trumpets; Guth- 
rum also prepares for battle, and exhorts his 
troops. St. Neot again appears as a venerable old 
man, with shining face and vesture, and arms in 
his hand. Alfred addresses his men before the fight, 
and St. Neot in person leads the English army at 
Ethandun. The siege of Chippenham and Guth- 
rum's baptism are described, and Guthrum's sub- 
mission is compared to the conversion of St. Paul. 
The second Latin life is wholly in prose, and 
adds a few details to the story. St. Neot becomes 
the son of Edulfus or Ethelwulf , King of one of the 
four English kingdoms. He visits Pope Marinus 
in Rome, and Alfred by his advice endows the 
English school. The swineherd's wife reproves 
the King's idleness with bitter reproaches. Alfred, 
"like another Job, " bears it patiently, and attends 
to the cakes. St. Neot, before Ethandim, exhorts 
the King and his followers to fight "as be- 
seems the athletes of Christ, " a phrase often used in 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to describe the 
Crusaders. During the battle Alfred sees "Neot, 
the glorious servant of Christ, " leading the army 
as the royal standard-bearer. He calls the atten- 
tion of his fellow-warriors to the presence of 



The Myth of King Alfred 441 

"Neot, Christ's most unconquered knight," and 
assures them of victory. Guthrum, who is com- 
pared to Goliath, is defeated, and baptised. SatJ 
becomes Paul; the wolf is turned into a lamb. 
Alfred also renounces his evil ways, and follows 
justice for the rest of his life, "ruling piously under 
the most pious King." 

The militant Christianity of these lives, their 
profusion of scriptural quotation and comparison, 
their stirring battle scenes, and edifying speeches, 
were well suited to the taste of the Crusading epoch, 
and in later days Archbishop Parker's inclusion of 
the story of "Alfred and the cakes" in the first 
printed edition of Asser's Life of the King won it 
credence as part of the original text. The omission 
of the miraculous element from the account of St. 
Neot's relations with Alfred, moreover, probably 
made it more popular with Protestant readers 
than the unexpurgated legend which connected the 
Athelney adventure with St. Cuthbert. 

The twelfth-century records of the history and 
miracles of that great northern bishop and saint ^ 
relate how Cuthbert appeared to King Alfred at 
Athelney, and cheered him with hopes of better 
times; how, after hiding for "three years" in the 
Glastonbury marshes, the King gathered together 
his followers, and defeated the Danes, and how on 

^ Simeon of Durham, ed. Arnold; Rolls Series; including History 
of the Church of Durham, History of the Kings by S. of Durham, 
and History of St. Cuthbert, and an account of his Miracles and 
Translations, both used by Simeon. 



442 Alfred the Truthteller 

his deathbed Alfred commended the church and 
monastery of St. Cuthbert to his son Edward, and 
bade him offer two bracelets {armillas) and a golden 
censer {thuribulum) at the shrine of the saint. ^ 

In these records Cuthbert comes as a pilgrim to 
Alfred and his wife, who are left with a single 
attendant, while their followers go out to fish. 
Alfred gives the wanderer his only remaining 
bread and wine; the attendant remonstrates, the 
saint vanishes, and the King's men return with a 
marvellous draught of three shiploads of fish. That 
night Cuthbert reveals himself in a vision, and 
gives Alfred assurance of victory. Next morning 
the King winds three blasts on his horn, his troops 
assemble, and he defeats the Danes. 

Another version of the story makes Alfred give 
half his bread and wine to the saint, and find the 
remainder miraculously undiminished. St. Cuth- 
bert, "Christ's knight," appears in a flood of light 
which illuminates the King's small sleeping-cham- 
ber, and says: "Be faithful to me and to my 
people, because all Albion is given to thee and to 
thy sons. ... Be just, because thou art chosen 
King of all Britain. " 

William of Malmesbury, that delightful medi- 
aeval story-teller, gives yet another form of the 
St. Cuthbert legend. The misfortunes of Alfred 

^ Edward passed on these injunctions to his son Athelstan, who 
made costly gifts to St. Cuthbert, among them a stole worked 
by order of the wife of Edward the Elder for Frithestan, Bishop 
of Winchester, which is still preserved at Durham. 



The Myth of King Alfred 443 

are treated as the penalty of England's national 
sins, while the saint in a vision brings the King 
hopes of pardon, and, as a sign of the truth of his 
words, works a miracle. The attendants who are 
out in search of food take a great draught of fish 
in spite of frost and ice. Alfred's mother, who 
shares his exile, is also visited by St. Cuthbert, as 
she snatches a little troubled sleep on her hard bed. 

To William of Malmesbury is further due the 
preservation of the picturesque tale of Alfred 
venturing into the Danish camp disguised as a 
minstrel or gleeman. He uses the knowledge thus 
obtained to win the victory of Ethandun over the 
indolent and careless enemy. " Gudrun, whom we 
call Gurmund," is baptised, and all ends happily. 
A similar story is told of the Northman Anlaf , who 
penetrated into the English camp before the tenth- 
century battle of Brunanburh. 

Another "floating folk-tale"^ of like nature 
may be traced in William of Malmesbury 's men- 
tion of the golden bracelets which Alfred ordered 
to be hung up at the cross-roads, unguarded 
treasures which none durst steal, so great was 
the peace and security of the kingdom. That 
William of Malmesbiuy also attributes to Alfred 
the institution of hundreds and tithings, as a 
police measure, shows that even before the middle 
of the twelfth century he was beginning to be 
regarded as the type of the just king, and this 
association of his name with judicial and adminis- 

' It is told also of RoUo of Normandy, and of other heroes. 



444 Alfred the Truthteller 

trative reforms is peculiarly interesting from its 
appearance at a time when Anglo-Norman lawyers 
and statesmen were trying to bring order and 
coherence into the tangle of Anglo-Saxon customs 
and "dooms." 

Even when, in the middle of the twelfth century, 
Geoffrey of Monmouth was charming the western 
world with the fantastic adventures of Merlin 
and King Arthur, the more prosaic Alfred was not 
forgotten. If Arthurian romance took court and 
camp and hall by storm, the didactic piety, legal 
fables, and moral tales of the Alfredian legend were 
cherished in the monastery and the council cham- 
ber, in the peasant's hut and the village ale-house. 
Layamon, the English paraphraser of Wace's 
metrical adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's 
History of the Britons, introduces Alfred into his 
rhymed chronicle, if only as a lawgiver, the trans- 
lator into English of the British law of Queen 
Marcie, a personification of Mercia^: 

Seotthen [subsequently] ther after 
Mani hundred winter 

Com Alfret the king 

Engelondes deorling^ 

And worhte [wrought] the lawe an Englis [in English] 

The thirteenth century, which saw the growth 
of English national feeling and the long fight for 
freedom in the reigns of John and Henry III., saw 

' Geoffrey of Monmouth makes Alfred translate the British 
" Molmutine " or " Moluntyne " laws into English. 
^ King Arthur is also called " Britain's darling." 



The Myth of King Alfred 445 

also the development of the English element in 
literature. As in the previous period the vulgar 
tales of the countryside had found a place in 
Latin prose, so now the tradition of Alfred's jus- 
tice and wisdom, his piety and love of his people, 
found voice in English verse. Already in the 
twelfth century the chronicler Ailred or Ethelred 
of Rievaulx wrote of Alfred's "parables" {para- 
holcB), which tended to edification, delight, and 
mirth, and a Winchester chronicler described him 
as so "brilliant in proverbs," that he had never 
been surpassed. It seems likely, then, that he was 
quoted as a source of popular wisdom before the 
thirteenth century, when, in the poem of the "Owl 
and the Nightingale," "Alured king," ''Alured 
that was wise," is credited with the proverbial 
sayings which are introduced into the dialogue 
between the two birds. 

A much more elaborate collection of rhymed 
sayings of the same kind has been preserved in 
two thirteenth-century manuscripts, under the 
name of "Precepts" or "Saws" of King Alfred 
{Documenta Regis Aluredi) . This poem opens with 
a meeting of the witan — thegns and bishops, 
book-learned men, earls and knights — at Seaford, 
in Sussex, imder King Alfred : 

Englene herde, England's (shep)herd, 

Englene derling, England's darling, ' 

In Engelonde he was king. In England he was king. 

» Literally: "The (shep)herd of the English, the darling of the 
English." 



446 Alfred the Truthteller 

The prologue ends with further praise of the 
King who taught his people how to lead good 
lives: 

Alfred he was in Englelonde a king, 

(Alfred was in England king,) 
Wei swithe strong and lufsum thing; 

(A very strong and lovesome thing;) 
He was king and clerc, 

(He was king and clerk,) 
Ful wel he lovede Godis were ; 

(Full well he loved God's work;) 
He was wis on his word, 

(He was wise in his word,) 
And war on his werke ; 

(And wary in his work ;) 
He was the wisiste mon 

(He was the wisest man) 
That was in Englelonde on. 

(That was in England.) ^ 

Alfred, "the comforter of the English" {Englene 
frowere), then harangues his subjects on the duties 
of Christians in general, and of Christian kings 
and nobles in particular, in verses which read like 
an expansion on feudal lines of the passage in 
the Boethius on the three orders of men. King, 
earl and astheling, clerk and knight, are to judge 
rightly, and to rule by law, while the knight is 
specially bidden to guard the land, and give peace 
to the rich, and quiet to the ceorl, to enable him "his 

' From Text B, with Kemble's translation. Cf. Skeat, Pro- 
verbs of Alfred, Clar. Press, 1907; Salomon and Saturnus, ed. 
Kemble, ^Ifric Soc, 1848. 



The Myth of King Alfred 447 

seed to sow, his meads to mow, his ploughs to 
drive. " The "saws of King Alfred " follow, maxims 
on the uncertainty of life and of earthly wealth, 
each preceded by the words "thus quoth Alfred." 
The second part of the poem begins with an 
exhortation to Alfred's "dear friends" to listen, 
and to learn "wit and wisdom." The proverbs in 
which this wisdom is enshrined echo the popular 
philosophy of the time, the pithy familiar sayings 
of the English peasantry: "Wise child is father's 
bliss"; "Better is child unborn than unbeaten"; 
"Fool's bolt is soon shot"; "Whoso letteth his 
wife become his master, shall never be lord of his 
word." The somewhat cynical common-sense of 
the warnings against trusting in wife, or friend, or 
wealth, and the injunctions to reticence and pru- 
dence, are relieved by passages which, if only 
Alfred's in name, are full of his spirit of gallant 
endurance : 

If thou hast sorrow, tell it not thy foe ; 
Sit thy saddle-bow, and ride thee singing ; 

or: 

Whithersoever thou wendst, say thou at the end 
Let be what may be, God's will be done ; 

a thought which agrees well with Alfred's own 
words: "I say, then, as say all Christian men, 
that the divine purpose rules, and not fate."' 

The third and concluding part of the " Proverbs " 
contains advice to the King's son. Here each 

' Boethius, XXXIX., § viii., p. 131. 



448 Alfred the Truthteller 

section begins: "Thus quoth Alfred: 'My son so 
dear.' " The son, presumably Edward the Elder, 
is enjoined to be a father and lord to his people, a 
father to the child and a friend to the widow, to 
comfort and defend the poor and weak, to rule 
himself by law, and to remember his God. It is the 
old ideal of the king below the law, as Alfred had 
known it in the ninth century, recurring after 
more than three hundred years, mixed up oddly 
enough with traditional folk-lore and homely 
counsel, yet still, as the Barons' War was soon to 
show, powerful for inspiration and guidance, a 
rallying-cry in the struggle for liberty. ^ 

Matthew Paris, the thirteenth-century monk of 
St. Albans, whose chronicle gathered up the work 
of his predecessors, and became the standard 
mediceval history of later ages, pieces together 
the story of Alfred from many sources, and makes 
of it a consecutive and interesting narrative. Al- 
fred burns the cakes, fortifies himself in the isle of 
Athelney with "towers and ramparts," goes to 
Cornwall to visit St. Neot, returns to the island 
and sees St. Cuthbert in a vision, vows to build a 
monastery at Athelney, wins the battle of Ethan- 
dun, enfeoffs Gytro or Guthrum with East Anglia, 
raises Denewulf , whom he had first met as a swine- 
herd at Athelney, to the see of Winchester,^ di- 

' Cf. the working out of this idea in the Song of Lewes, ed. 
Kingsford. Cf, Political Songs, ed. Wright, Camden Soc. 

* The story of Denewulf is found in William of Malmesbury, 
Gest. Pont. Roger of Wendover, revised by Matthew Paris, is, 
however, the first to connect it definitely with Athelney. 




o 2 



X :2 CL 



The Myth of King Alfred 449 

vides England into hundreds and tithings, hangs 
up golden bracelets at the cross-roads, and dies as 
monarch of all England except Northumbria and 
East Anglia. 

In the beautiful contemporary manuscript of his 
Chronica Majora which Matthew Paris presented 
to St. Albans, is a portrait of Alfredus rex, as the 
monastic draftsman pictured him: a bearded, 
regular-featured prince, wearing a crown of thir- 
teenth-century fashion,^ and holding a scroll in- 
scribed: Primus in anglia regnavi solus, scilicet 
monarcha.' 

The image of Alfred, "the first monarch of the 
English," thus impressed itself on the minds of 
patriotic Englishmen, to the exclusion of the more 
imposing figure of the conqueror of the vikings. 
The memory of those old fights with the "heathen 
men" was gradually merged in the dazzling fic- 
tions of crusading romance,^ while Guthrum and 
Haesten and RoUo developed legends of their own, * 
and the fame of Alvrekr or Alrekr, King of the 
English, lingered but faintly in the northern sagas. ^ 

' On his coins he wears a diadem. 

' Cf. the drawing of Alfred with a man kneeling to him, in 
the second part of the Chronica. 

3 Even the viking siege of Paris became in time a siege by 
Saracens. 

■* A certain Guthrum or Gurmundus is supposed to have burnt 
the British city of Cirencester by the well-known viking device 
of tying lighted straws to sparrows, and throwing the birds 
into the besieged town. For Heesten cf. Eng. Hist. Rev., xiii., p. 
439. s Cf. Hervarar Saga. 

29 



450 Alfred the Truthteller 

During the fourteenth century the Alfredian 
myth developed chiefly on ecclesiastical and aca- 
demic lines. The Mirror of Justices {Miroir des 
Justices), which may date from the end of the thir- 
teenth century, reflects an Alfred who hangs forty- 
four imjust judges in one day, and in whose reign 
trial by jury was already an old English institution. 
A new element is introduced by the later Liber de 
Hyda, which places the foundation of the Univer- 
sity of Oxford in 886, "in the presence of the most 
glorious and invincible King Alfred, whose memory 
will dwell like honey in the mouths of all," and 
before the assembled clergy and people of the 
realm. A regular staff of "regents," professors, 
and readers is appointed. St. Neot teaches 
theology, St. Grimbald divinity, Asser, grammar 
and rhetoric, John, the monk of St. Davids, logic, 
music, and arithmetic, another John, apparently 
the Old-Saxon, geometry and astronomy. This 
passage was, doubtless, inserted to do honour to 
Grimbald, the first abbot of Hyde, who, with 
King Alfred, is described as addressing the na- 
tional assembly on their ignorance and need of 
instruction. 

Ralph Higden, in his Polychronicon, goes a step 
further, and makes Alfred, by the advice of St. 
Neot, establish "public schools for the various 
arts" at Oxford. Another tradition, which be- 
came current about this time, that Alfred was the 
founder of University College, Oxford, was turned 
to practical use when in 1379 the Master and 



The Myth of King Alfred 451 

Scholars of "Mickle University Hall in Oxenford" 
successfully petitioned Richard II., as the royal 
foundation of his noble progenitor King Alfred, ^ 
to evoke a lawsuit in which they were involved, 
from the court of King's Bench to the Privy Coun- 
cil. From the Book of Hyde comes, also, Alfred's 
appropriation of a definite portion of his revenues 
to the maintenance of the Oxford schools, his 
division of the kingdom into counties as well 
as hundreds, and the wild tale of his youthful 
journey to Ireland, to be cured of his incurable 
malady by the Irish Saint Modwenna, who after- 
wards founded two nunneries in England, at Strene- 
shale and at Pollisvytham, ^ where Ethelwulf 's sister, 
"the holy Edith," was professed. 

The fourteenth-century legends reach their 
highest point of pure imagination in the fairy- 
tale of Nestingus, the beautiful child, robed in 
purple, with gold bracelets on its arms, which was 
found in an eagle's nest at the top of a tree when 
Alfred was hunting in the forest, and educated at 
the King's expense. ^ 

The lively fancy of the romantic historians of 
the fifteenth century added fresh details to the 
Alfredian legend, without substantially altering 
it. The "noble King Alfred" now, after the 

* The original petition is in French. — 2 Rich. II. The King's 
writ was issued in 1381. For the whole subject cf. Parker, The 
Early History of Oxford, c. ii., Oxf. Hist. Soc, iii., 1884-5. 

' Probably Stramshall in Staffordshire and Polesworth in 
Warwickshire. 

* John of Tynemouth, Historia Aurea. 



452 Alfred the Truth teller 

fashion of the period, founds three halls at Oxford, 
"in the name of the Holy Trinity," for the study 
of grammar, logic or philosophy, and theology, 
and sends his own son Ethelwerd to the University, 
of which Grimbald becomes the first Chancellor.^ 
The King himself is "a perfect clerk," and 
translates into English : 

The lawes of Troye and Brute, 
Lawes Moluntynes and Marcians congregate, 
With Danyshe lawes that were well constitute, 
And Grekysche also well made and appropate. " 

So high, indeed, was Alfred's historic and legend- 
ary fame at this period that in 1441 Henry VI. 
applied to Pope Eugenius IV. for the canonisation 
of "the first monarch of the famous realm of 
England," and though the request was refused, 
he may surely be counted a saint, "though not in 
the Pope's, yet in the People's Calendar."^ 

With the revival of learning in the sixteenth 
century, the myth of King Alfred entered on a 
new phase. Though the early history of England 

' John Rous, or Ross, Hist. Regum AnglicB. The sites of two of the 
three houses bought in the thirteenth century for the foundation 
of University College were subsequently absorbed by Brasenose 
College. These three houses became the three "halls" of Rous, 
founded by King Alfred. Hence Brasenose College claims a 
mythical connection with Alfred, possesses "a fancy portrait 
in fancy dress" of the great King, and has sculptured heads of 
Alfred and Johannes Scotus Erigena over the door of the hall. 

' John Hardyng, Chronicle. Cf. GeoflFrey of Monmouth. 

5 Thos. Fuller, Church Hist., says this of Bishop Grosseteste. 



The Myth of King Alfred 453 

was at first somewhat neglected, in the absorbing 
interest of classical studies, those studies led in 
time to a more scientific and critical appreciation 
of the treasures of antiquity. While the great 
poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan era drew 
inspiration from Celtic rather than from Anglo- 
Saxon sources, scholars and antiquaries turned 
with growing enthusiasm to the records of Eng- 
land's past. 

In 1574 appeared Archbishop Parker's edition 
of Asser's life of Alfred, Mlfredi Regis Res GestcB, 
an epoch-making book, in spite of its many short- 
comings. It was printed in Anglo-Saxon letters, 
"out of veneration for the antiquity of the arche- 
type," and had a fancy portrait of King Alfred 
on the title-page. Camden's edition followed in 
1602-3, with the interpolated passage on the 
University of Oxford, which had been printed in 
1600, in an edition of the great antiquary's 
Britannia, nominally from "an excellent manu- 
script copy of Asser, who was at that time pro- 
fessor. " Oxford is here represented as already an 
ancient seat of learning in the ninth century, when 
Grimbald arrives in the character of a reformer, 
and gives great offence to the "old scholars" 
(scholastici) whom he finds there, by his innova- 
tions in the methods of teaching. Alfred comes to 
Oxford to settle the dispute, hears the arguments 
on both sides, and receives proof from the chroni- 
cles that the routine of the schools had been es- 
tablished by such pious and learned men as 



454 Alfred the Truthteller 

"St. Gildas, Melkinus, Nennius, Kentigern, and 
others," and approved by St. Germanus when he 
visited Britain. The King then exhorts the dis- 
putants to maintain unity and concord, but Grim- 
bald retires in dudgeon to the new monastery 
which Alfred had founded at Winchester, and 
removes thither the tomb which he had prepared 
for his burial in the crypt of the stone church of 
St. Peter, which he had built in Oxford. ^ 

There can be little doubt that this wonderful 
piece of fiction was a deliberate forgery, intended 
to support the claim of Oxford to be an older uni- 
versity than Cambridge. A fierce controversy on 
this subject had resulted from a speech of the 
Cambridge orator in 1564, on the occasion of 
Queen Elizabeth's visit to the University. The 
Cambridge champion began by asserting that 
whereas Oxford University could claim no higher 
antiquity than the reign of Alfred, his own founda- 
tion went back to Cantaber, an exiled Spanish 
prince, who took refuge with the British King 
Gurguntius, or, if this origin were rejected as 
fabulous, it had a historical founder, of much 
earlier date than Alfred, in Sigebert, the seventh- 
century King of East Anglia, who established 
schools of learning in his kingdom.^ Later on, the 
line of attack was changed, and the validity of 
Alfred's claims was denied, on the ground that no 
life of the West-Saxon King mentioned the Oxford 

' The twelfth- century church of St. Peter-in-the-East. 

" This rests upon a passage in Bede's Ecclesiastical History. 



The Myth of King Alfred 455 

schools. Camden's interpolation, then, came in 
opportunely, for it not only gave contemporary 
historical evidence for Alfred's restoration of the 
University, but relegated its foundation to the 
days before the Germanic invasions of Britain. 

From the first, however, the paragraph was 
viewed with distrust, and Camden was suspected 
of having concocted it with the help of his fellow- 
antiquary. Sir Henry Savile. The discrepancies 
between dates and facts were noted, and Sir 
John Spelman, who firmly believed that Alfred 
founded the University, writes of the attempt to 
make him merely a restorer: "As new Pieces never 
suit handsomely in an old Garment, so that Inser- 
tion not squaring well with other Circumstances, 
discovers itself to have been a Patch of a late 
hand." Still, the legend persisted, and Alfred 
continued to be regarded as the founder, or the 
restorer, of the University. 

Sir John Spelman describes a "fair window" in 
St. Mary's Church, in Oxford, "where both the 
Story and the Glory of the Universitie's Founda- 
tion by Alfred was beautifully set forth both in 
Picture and Verses," and on St. Martin's Eve 
prayers were accustomed to be offered in the Ox- 
ford schools for all benefactors, and for the 
souls of those departed, "more especially for the 
soul of King Alfred, the first founder of this 
University." 

The publication of Parker's edition of Asser, 
moreover, with the learned disputations which 



456 Alfred the Truthteller 

followed the appearance of Camden's edition, 
thirty years later, did much to revive the failing 
popular interest in King Alfred. The story of the 
cakes assumed a new form in a rude ballad, which 
can be traced back to 1578, four years after the 
publication of Parker's Asser.^ Alfred goes forth, 
dressed as a beggar, in quest of sport : 

Thus coasting thorowe [through] Somersetshire 

Neere Newton-Court he met 

A shepheard swaine of lusty limbes 

That up and downe did jet. 

They fight, after deciding that the victor shall have 
the food in the shepherd's scrip as a prize: 

So soundly thus they both fall to't, 
And giving bang for bang 
At ev'ry blow the shepheard gave, 
King Alfred's sword cride [cried] twang. 

Alfred now demands a truce. The shepherd 
engages him as his man, gives him a "penny 
round" as earnest-money, and brings him to his 
cottage and his churlish wife, "old Gillian." 
Then comes the cake incident : 

But as he sate with smiling cheere 

The event of all to see, 

His dame brought forth a piece of dowe [dough] 

Which in the fire throws she; 

' In the seventeenth century this ballad was issued as a broad- 
side, in two parts, headed by rough woodcuts, under the title of 
"The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian, the Shepherd's 
Wife, with her Churlish answers; being full of mirth and merry 
pastime. To the tune of Flying Fame. " 



" Whom liave you here ?" quoth she ; 
'A fellow I doubt will cut our throats, 
so like a knave lookes hee." 



144 



Cjbe seconn part. 

To THE SAME TUNE. 







^^m 




^m 




l\ 


w}^^ 


m)^hlh—m 


1 li] 


K i 


^ES^»-LAi| 



" Not so, old dame," quoth Alfred straight, 

" of mee you need not feare ; 
My master hath hired me for ten groates 

to serve you one whole yeare : 148 

So, good dame Gillian, grant me leave 

within your house to stay ; 
For, by Saint Anne, doe what you can, 

I will not yet away." 152 

Her churlish usage pleas'd him still, 

but put him to such proofs 
That he that night was almost choakt 

within that smoakie roofe. 156. 



The Myth of King Alfred 457 

Where lying on the harth to bake 

By chance the cake did burne: 

"What! canst thou not, thou lout," quoth she, 

"Take pains the same to turne? 

"Thou art more quick to rake it out 
And eat it up half do we [dough]. 
Than thus to stay till't be enough, 
And so thy manners show. 

"But serve me such another tricke, 
I'll thwack thee on the snout:" 
Which made the patient king, good man, 
Of her to stand in doubt. 

The next morning, Alfred blows his horn; his 
"Lords and Knights" assemble, the shepherd and 
his wife expect to be hanged, but the King is 
gracious to them, gives them sheep and pasture- 
land, and changes their cottage into a stately hall. 
In return, the shepherd is to offer the King a milk- 
white lamb each year, and Gillian is to bring wool 
for coats at New Year's tide. The grateful shep- 
herd says: 

"And in your prayse, my bag-pipe shall 
Sound sweetly once a yeere, 
How Alfred our renowned king 
Most kindly hath beene here." 

The ballad of "King Olfry and the Old Abbot" 
probably also refers to Alfred in its earlier form, ^ 

' The later form of this ballad is called "King John and the 
Abbot of Canterbury. " 



458 Alfred the Truthteller 

where the abbot saves his life by getting his 
brother, a shepherd, to personate him, and answer 
the three questions set by the King. 

Even the poHtical troubles of the seventeenth 
century did not altogether break the Alfredian tra- 
dition. In the reign of James I. a new departure was 
made by the appearance of a Latin tragi-comedy, 
written by William Drury, a Roman Catholic, 
on the subject of Alvredus or Alfredus. Some 
years later, in 1634, Robert Powell published his 
singular little book, The Life of Alfred, or Alvred, 
The first Institutor of subordinate government in 
this kingdome, and Refounder of the University of 
Oxford. Together with a Parallel of our Soveraigne 
Lord K. Charles untill the yeare, 16J4. In this 
medley of legendary absurdities and fulsome 
adulation, Neote, the first Oxford divinity reader, 
becomes the second son of Ethelwulf, by Judith, 
and Alfred refounds that "renowned Seminary," 
the "Garden of Art and Learning," Oxford Uni- 
versity, which had been "laid waste and even with 
the dust," in the Danish wars, while all the old 
fables are served up again, in their most exagger- 
ated form. Stress is laid on Alfred's "Princely 
piety" in enforcing the payment of tithes, "the 
just alimony of the painefuU ministry," and the 
book concludes with a minute and laboured com- 
parison of that "paire of Peerlesse Princes," 
Alfred and Charles I. 

A far more creditable and scholarly production 
is Sir John Spelman's Life of Mlfred the Great, 



^^■^■■^■^i^HiP!!^:- 




IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF ALFRED 

From Hearne's Edition of Sir John Spelman's Life of Alfred, the Great, lyog: 

the first printed edition of the English MS. 

Drawn and engraved by Michael Burghers from a pencil sketch in the original MS. 



The Myth of King Alfred 459 

which seems to have been written while its royalist 
author was at Oxford with Charles I., after the 
outbreak of the Civil War. Here, in the summer 
of 1643, he died of the camp disease, leaving his 
book in manuscript. It was published in a Latin 
translation in 1678, with comments by Obadiah 
Walker, Master of University College, Oxford, 
and a dedication to Charles II., comparing him to 
Alfred. Walker's notes were regarded as "Pop- 
ish,"^ and in 1686 the stone statue of King Alfred 
which had been set over the gate of University 
College in 1683 was ignominiously "plucked 
downe" by ardent Oxford Protestants. 

Spelman is the first to give Alfred the formal 
title of The Great, which he derived from Baronius, 
the sixteenth-century Italian Cardinal and church 
historian, who, under the year 878, speaks of him 
as "deservedly called the Great" {Magnus, merito 
nuncupatus) . ^ 

Credulous and uncritical as this first attempt at 
a complete English life of Alfred seems, when 
tested by modem standards, Spelman had read 

" He afterwards became a Roman Catholic. 

' "Being beloved of all his Neighbour Princes, and honoured of 
all both far and near, in so much that (as Baronius telleth us) he 
obtained the Sirname of The Great. " — Spelman, Life of Alfred, 
p. 2 1 5. Cf . Nicholas Smith, Flores Hist. Ecclesiastics (i 7th cent.) : 
"He alone of all the kings of England, for his great deeds in 
war and peace received the surname [cognomen] of Great." Cf. 
Bale, Script. Illust. Major. Brit. (i6th cent.), Alfredus Magnus 
(quoted in Testimonia de Alfredo Rege, Wise, Asser, p. 109). 
Baronius, Annates Ecclesiastici, xv., p. 336, He is incidentally 
called "the great king" in earlier chronicles. 



46o Alfred the Truthteller 

widely, and treated his subject with learning and 
eloquence. If he saw the institution of trial by 
jury in Alfred's provision for "the Purgation of 
the King's Thaines by twelve of their Peers," and 
"in the Purging of Borsholders by the oath of 
twelve Borsholders," a confused attribution to 
Alfred's days of the police system of frankpledge, 
yet he knew that there was no trustworthy docu- 
mentary evidence for Alfred's division of England 
into shires and tithings, and fell back on the 
convenient supposition that some of the West- 
Saxon laws had been lost, while in the matter of 
the University of Oxford, he made an honest 
effort to weigh the arguments, and to arrive at a 
fair conclusion. 

The Civil War turned the thoughts of English- 
men to sterner themes and more vital problems 
than the leisurely pursuit of antiquarian studies. 
Yet if Waller's Roundhead soldiers scattered the 
ashes of Anglo-Saxon kings to the winds, ^ the 
Puritan poet Milton^ could admire Alfred's "noble 
mind, which rendered him the Mirror of Princes," 
and plan a tragedy, or "a heroical poem," on his 
adventures in the isle of Athelney. 

' The reputed bones of Egbert and Ethelwulf, with those of 
other kings, were collected about 1520 by the pious care of 
Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, and placed in wooden chests, 
inscribed with their names, in Winchester Cathedral. In Decem- 
ber, 1642, some of these chests were broken open by Waller's 
soldiers, and many of the bones were dispersed. 

' Masson, Life of Milton, ii., p. 114. Speed (17th cent.) calls 
him Speculum principum, et incomparabilem Principem. 







IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF ALFRED 

From the Frontispiece in Wise's Asser, 1722 

Engraved by George Vertiie from a picture at University College, Oxford 

The same picture was engraved by Burghers for Spelman's Aelfredi 

Magni Vila, 1678 



The Myth of King Alfred 461 

At the opening of the eighteenth century, a 
strong impulse was given to the scientific study of 
archasology by thepubHcation of Hickes' celebrated 
Thesaurus, which contains excellent engravings of 
the recently discovered "Alfred Jewel." In 1722 
Francis Wise published his interesting edition of 
Asser, with a long "Apology" for Camden's 
interpolation in the text.^ Wise, also, in his 
"letter to Dr. Mead," printed in 1738, discusses 
the site of the battle of Ashdown, and the meaning 
of the White Horse on the hill, which he took to be 
a memorial of the victory, and a representation 
of the "standard," or "arms," of the Saxons. 
With much that is ridiculous, Wise combined great 
good sense and discrimination, and he wrote with 
real eloquence of King Alfred, "the most perfect 
monarch that ever adorned the English throne." 
He certainly did rot deserve the savage attack 
made on him by Philalethes Rusticus, in The 
Impertinence and Imposture of Modern Antiquar- 
ianism Displayed, where it is maintained that 
Alfred's "arms" were not a horse, but a cross, 
between five martlets, as shown on Kempsford 
Tower, in Gloucestershire.^ The writer clinches 

' It also included a portrait of Alfred, engravings of the heads 
of Alfred and Johannes Scotus Erigena over the door of the hall 
at Brasenose College, a facsimile of a page of the Cotton MS., a 
figure of the Alfred Jewel, Alfred's will in Latin, and other 
additions. 

' "The History of Gloucestershire tells us, that King Alfred's 
Arms are upon Kempsford Tower; where we find the Cross afore- 
said between five Martlets. " Cf. Atkins, Hist, of Gloucestershire. 



462 Alfred the Truthteller 

his argument by a reference to "that most Authen- 
tick Record the Oxford- Almanack for 1735: Where 
we have K. Alfred in all his Glory, seated upon his 
Royal Throne, under his own Ensign, which is 
exhibited as the very same upon the Tower afore- 
said, bating oiie Martlet only."'' Wise rejoined, 
supporting his original position by amazing argu- 
ments, drawn from Hengest and Horsa, and the 
White Horse of Hanover, but explaining that he 
believed the cross to have been adopted as the 
royal arms in the reign of Alfred.'' 

While learned antiquaries were thus transferr- 
ing the Scholasticism, Chivalry, and Heraldry of 
the later mediaeval period to the age of Alfred, the 
story of Alfred himself, the model prince of the 
Germanic races, ^ found favoiu: with the minor 
poets and dramatists of Hanoverian England. 

In 1740, Thomson, who in his Seasons calls 
Alfred the "best of kings," produced, in conjunc- 
tion with David Mallet, the masque of Alfred, 

' In this pamphlet occur the lines by "an Oxford Scholar" now 
to be read on picture post-cards of the White Horse: 

" See here the Pad of good King Alfry. 
" Sure never was so rare a Palfry!" etc. 

'University College, Oxford, still bears the cross and four 
martlets as its arms. The cross, or on azure, is patonce: by some 
antiquaries, as in the portrait of Alfred in Wise's Asser, it is 
represented as fitchSe, and the martlets are omitted. 

3 Brunner, the great jurist, speaks of " the appearance of the 
victorious and lawgiving ruler," the "German national ideal," 
as realised in Charles (the Great), Alfred, Rollo, Godfrey de 
Bouillon, and Frederick I. — Rechtseinheit, 19, quoted by Lieber- 
mann, op. ciL, ii., ii., /Elfred. 




THE ARMS OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 



The Myth of King Alfred 463 

in which the song of "Rule Britannia" first 
appeared. Blackmore's heavy epic, in twelve 
books, on the same subject, was dedicated, with 
unconscious irony, to Frederick, Prince of Wales, 
the dissipated son of George II., as suited for the 
"forming of a young Prince for Empire and the 
right Government of a people." Though Dr. 
Johnson's contemplated " Life of Alfred " was never 
written, no fewer than six dramas or poems on 
Alfredian history and legend followed in quick 
succession between 1750 and 1850, including a 
five-act play by Home, the author of Douglas. 
The titles of these ephemeral publications suf- 
ficiently indicate the conditions under which they 
were composed. The Patriot King, The Battle 
of Eddington, or British Liberty, Alfred, or the Magic 
Banner, suggest the influence of the French Re- 
volution, and the dawn of the Romantic movement 
in literature.^ 

In the early nineteenth century, the same 
tendencies are visible. If Shelley, in his "Ode to 
Liberty," devotes only a line or two to "Saxon 
Alfred," Wordsworth has commemorated the 
"Lord of the harp and hberating spear," the 
"Mirror of Princes," and "Darling of England," 
in two fine sonnets on Alfred and his descendants.^ 



' In 1798, when England was threatened with invasion by 
the French a "Historical Ballet" on the subject of King Alfred 
was represented, with great success, at Sadler's Wells. 

^'Cf. F. T. Palgrave, The Visions of England, 1881, "Alfred 
the Great," and "A Danish Barrow." 



464 Alfred the Truthteller 

In 1849 the millenary of the great King's birth 
was celebrated at Wantage with feasting and 
merry-making; a medal was struck, and a Jubilee 
edition of Alfred's works, in an English translation, 
was issued, with illustrative essays on the history 
of the ninth century. About this time, too, in 
the year of revolutions, 1848, the German patriot, 
Reinhold Pauli, soothed his exile in England by 
writing the life of Alfred, the constitutional King 
of a free country. ' 

Meantime, not serious literature alone, but fic- 
tion, burlesque, and farce were busy with Alfred's 
name. He figured in sentimental romance and in 
tales of adventure, in Christmas pantomime and 
in musical comedy, in the satire of Thackeray,^ 
and in the pages of Punch. The stories of the 
cakes and the minstrel harp were told in every 
nursery and village school in England, and the 
"old White Horse" and his annual "scouring" 
became familiar to all readers of the vigorous prose 
of Tom Hughes. 3 In 1872 a dinner was actually 
given in University College, Oxford, to celebrate 
the supposed millenary of its foundation, and 
though King Alfred's name no longer heads the 
list of pious founders and benefactors whom the 

' Cf. the preface to his Konig Mlfred und seine Stelle in der 
Ceschichte Englands (Life of King Alfred), 1851. 

^ The Newcomes, c. xvii. (A School of Art) ; Our Street, in 
Christmas Books (A Studio in Our Street). 

3 The Scouring of the White Horse; or the Long Vacation Ramble 
of a London Clerk. 1859. Cf. Tom Brown's School Days, c. i. Cf. 
G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse. 




EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BUST OF ALFRED THE GREAT IN UNIVERSITY 

COLLEGE, OXFORD 

Photographed by permission 

Presented in 1771 by Jacob, Viscount Folkestone, in honour of the mythical 

founder of the College 



The Myth of King Alfred 465 

University yearly commemorates, the Oxford Uni- 
versity Calendar still records that "the Great 
Hall of the University, commonly called Uni- 
versity College in Oxford ... is said to have been 
founded in the year 878 by Alfred the Great. "^ 

Finally, in 1901, the commemoration of the mil- 
lenary of Alfred's death called general attention 
once more to his life and works. His statue, by 
Hamo Thorny croft, was set up at Winchester, 
with pageantry and oratory, thanksgiving and 
song. Again a medal was struck in Alfred's 
honour, and a battle-ship, the King Alfred, was 
launched, in remembrance of the reputed founder 
of the English navy, while books were written and 
lectures delivered on every aspect of Alfredian 
history and literature. 

In all these celebrations, nothing was more 
striking than the way in which they emphasised 
the continuity of the ancient legends, and the 
consensus of European opinion on the fame of 
the great English King, and on his perfection of 
character: "the practical character, fired half 
unconsciously with imagination," in which Lord 
Rosebery has seen the secret of true greatness. "^ 

' Cf. the well-known story of Lord Eldon's examination in 
history for his degree at Oxford, in the reign of George III. The 
examination consisted of one question: Who founded Univer- 
sity College? to which he replied, "King Alfred." University 
College still preserves a marble bas-relief of King Alfred in the 
hall, a marble bust in the Fellows' common room, and a curious 
medallion in the library, in which the King is represented in a 
tinsel crown and a crimson velvet robe. 

' Cf. his speech at the national commemoration of the King 
30 



466 Alfred the Truthteller 

Thus every age has had its own vision of King 
Alfred, dim, fantastic, distorted, even grotesque 
it may be, yet always a reflection, however faint, 
of "the light that rose out of darkness," in the 
middle of the ninth century. Much regretful 
sentiment has been lavished on the ruthless de- 
struction of old romance by the modern scientific 
historian. In reality, the genuine popular tradi- 
tions are indestructible, for they are rooted deep 
in the national life. The myths of the past make 
the history of the future, and it is not so much by 
truth itself as by what men believe to be true that 
they are inspired to action. The legendary tales 
which have gathered about the name of King 
Alfred may be shadows from the actual events of 
his life, or merely the dreams of later ages concern- 
ing him. In either case they show, by their very 
simplicity, that his appeal has been to humble folk, 
that the poor have seen in him their helper, and 
that his memory still dwells in good works in 
the country for which he fought and suffered, the 
England which might say, in the words of the 
golden legend encircling the Alfred Jewel : 

Alfred mec heht gewyrcan. 
(Alfred bade me be wrought.) 



Alfred Millenary. Bowker, The King Alfred Millenary, 1902, 
p. III. 




Photo, Dawkes & Partridge 
ALFRED'S MONUMENT AT ATHELNEY 



APPENDIX 

Inscription on the monument to King Alfred at 
Athelney : 

"King Alfred the Great, in the year of our Lord 879, 
having been defeated by the Danes, fled for refuge 
to the forest of Athelney, where he lay concealed from 
his enemies for the space of a whole year. He soon 
after regained possession of the throne; and in grate- 
ful remembrance of the protection he had received, 
under the favour of Heaven, he erected a monastery 
on this spot, and endowed it with all the lands con- 
tained in the Isle of Athelney. To perpetuate the 
memory of so remarkable an incident in the life of 
that illustrious prince, this edifice was founded by 
John Slade, Esq., of Maunsel, the proprietor of Athel- 
ney, and lord of the manor of North Petherton, a.d. 
1801." 

Inscription on the statue of King Alfred at Wantage 
(the work of H. S. H, Count Gleichen, unveiled July 
14.1877): 

"Alfred found learning dead, and he restored it. 
Education neglected, and he revived it. The laws 
powerless, and he gave them force. The Church 
debased, and he raised it. The land ravaged by a 
fearful enemy, from which he delivered it. Alfred's 
name will live as long as mankind shall respect the 
past." 



467 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The references in the text are to the following editions: 
PRIMARY SOURCES 

Early English Text Society (E. E. T. S.):— King Alfred's West- 
Saxon version of Gregory's Pastoral Care (English translation, 
notes, etc.). Ed. H. Sweet. 1871-2. Vols, xlv., xlvi. 

King Alfred's Orosius, Part I. (Old English text and Latin 
original). Ed. H. Sweet. 1883. Vol. Ixxix. 

The Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the 
English People (English trans., etc.). Ed. T. Miller. Parts 
I., II. 1890-1. Vols, xcv., xcvi. 

An Old English Martyrology (with notes, etc.). Ed. George 
Herzfeld. 1900. Vol. cxvi. 

King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of the Compendious History 
of the World. Ed., with notes, by Joseph Bosworth. 1859, 

King Alfred's Old English version of Boethius, De Consolatione 
Philosophic (with notes, etc.). Ed. Walter John Sedgefield. 
1899. 

King Alfred's version of the Consolations of Boethius. Done 
into modern English, with an Introduction. W. J. Sedgefield. 
1900. 

King Alfred's Old English version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies 
(with notes, etc.). Ed. Henry Lee Hargrove. Yale Studies 
in English, 13. 1902. 

The same. Turned into modern English. H. L. Hargrove. 
Yale Studies in English, 22. 1904. 

Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. Plummer and Earle. 
2 vols. (Introduction, notes, etc.) 

(The A. S. Chronicle has also been edited, with a translation 
by Thorpe: Rolls Series, 2 vols.) 

Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. Ed. F. Liebermann. Vol, i., 
469 



470 Bibliography 

Text (with German trans.). 1903. Vol. ii. Part i.: Glossary. 
1906. Partii.: Notes. 1912. 
Ancient Laws and Institutes of England. Record Commission, 

2 vols. (Another edition of the A. S. Laws. Ed. Thorpe, with 
English translation.) 

The Legal Code of Alfred the Great. Ed. Milton Haight 
Turk. 1893. 

Cartularium Saxonicum. Ed. Walter de Gray Birch. 

3 vols. 

Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici. Ed. Kemble. 6 vols. 

Land Charters and Saxonic Documents. Ed. Earle. 

King Alfred's Will in: 

(i) Liber Vita: Register and Martyrology of New Minster and 
Hyde Abbey, Winchester. Ed. W. de Gray Birch. Hampshire 
Record Soc, 1892. 

(2) Birch: Cartularium Saxonicum. Vol. ii. 

(3) Liher de Hyda. Ed. Edward Edwards. Rolls Series. 

(4) Earle: Land Charters and Saxonic Documents (in Anglo- 
Saxon). 

(5) Wise: Asser's Life of Alfred (in Latin). 

(6) Edited separately by ©.Manning, 1788. 

Asser's Life of Kitig Alfred, together with the Annals of St. 
Neots. Ed. W. H. Stevenson (with Introduction and Com- 
mentary). 1904. 

Annates rerum gestarum ^Ifredi Magni recensuit Franciscus 
Wise. Oxon., 1722. (English translations in Six Old English 
Chronicles, Bohn's Antiquarian Library, ed. J. A. Giles; in 
Church Historians of England, vol. ii., Stevenson; and in the 
King's Classics, L. C. Jane, 1908.) 

Ethelwerdi Chronica: in Monumenta Historica Britannica. 
Record Commission. 

SECONDARY SOURCES 

Sfelman, Sir John : Mlfredi Magni Vita. 1678. (Trans, into 

Latin by C. Wase.) 

The Life of Alfred the Great. 1709. (Ed. Hearne.) 

Pauli, Reinhold : Konig Alfred und seine Stelle in der Geschichte 

Englands. Berlin, 1851. (English translations by Thos. Wright, 

Life of King Alfred, 1852, and Benjamin Thorpe, Life of Alfred 

the Great, 1853.) 



Bibliography 471 

Plummer, C: The Life and Times of Alfred the Great (Ford 
Lectures, 1901). 1902. 

The Proverbs of Alfred: in the Dialogue of Salomon and 
Saturnus, Kemble. /Elfric Soc, 1848. 

The Proverbs of Alfred. Ed. Skeat. Clarendon Press, 1907. 

The Whole Works of King Alfred the Great, with preliminary 
essays, etc. 3 vols, in 2. 1852-3. Reprinted 1858. 

Ker, W. p.: The Dark Age. 

Ten Brink, B.: Early English Literature (trans, from German 
by H. M. Kennedy). 1883. 

Ebert: Allgemeine Geschichte des Mittelalters im Abendlande. 
Vol. ii. 

WiJLKER, R. P. Grundriss zur Geschichte der Angelsachsischen 
Litteratur. 

Miles, Louis Wardlaw: King Alfred in Literature (Johns 
Hopkins Univ. Dissertation). Baltimore, 1902. 

Keary, C. W. : The Vikings in Western Christendom, 

Steenstrup; Normannerne (the Northmen). Copenhagen, 
1876-82. 

DuMMLER, E. : Geschichte des ostfrdnkischen Reichs. Band I., 
Ludwig der Deutsche. Band II., Die letzten Karolinger, Konrad I. 
1862-5. {Jahrbilcher der deutschen Geschichte.) 

Freeman, E. A.: Norman Conquest, and article ".^^^Ifred" in 
Diet. National Biog. 

Green, J. R.: The Conquest of England. 

Chadwick, H. M.: Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions. 1905- 

The Origin of the English Nation. 1907. 

Earle, John: The Alfred Jewel. 1901. 

BowKER, A.: Alfred the Great. Containing chapters on his 
life and times. 1899. 

The King Alfred Millenary. 1902. 

For further references cf. Gross, Sources and Literature of 
English History. 

The works of Henry of Huntingdon, Simeon of Durham, Wil- 
liam of Malmesbury, Gaimar, Matthew Paris, Higden (Poly- 
chronicon), etc., are published in the Rolls Series. 

Florence of Worcester is included in Monumenta Historica 
Britannica, and Ingulf of Croyland in Fulman's Rerum Angli- 
carum Scriptores, vol. i., Oxford, 1684. 



RDIC 



igHdC?) 

loppa (?) 
or Eafa (?) 

Ihmund 
ling in Kent 

Igbert 
02-839 

3lwulf = 2. Judith 
)-858 daughter of 

Charles the Bald 



Ethelswith = 
Burhred, King 
of the Mercians 



Ethelred Mucill 

ealdorman = Eadburh 
of the Gaini 



Ealhswith 



Idwin II., Count Ethelwerd 

of Flanders 



Adelolf 



KING ALFRED'S DESCENT FROM CERDIC 
Cerdic (?) 
Cynric (?) 



Ceawlin 

Coenbeorht 
sub-king 

Ceadwalla 
685-688 



Cuthwulf 

Ceolwald 

I 
Coenred 
or Cenred 
sub-king 



Ine 
I8-726 



Ingild(?) 

I 
Eoppa (?) 
Eaba or Eafa (?) 

Ealhmund 
sub-king in Kent 

Egbert 
802-839 

I. Osburh = Ethelwulf = 2. Judith 



daughter 
of Oslac, 
pincerna 



Ethelbald = Judith 
858-860 



Ethelbert 



^thelwald 
or iEthelwold 



^thelhelm 
or ^thelm 



Ethelred I. 
866-871 

I 



Oswald (?) 
filius regis 



839-858 



daughter of 
Charles the Bald 



Ethelswith = 
Burhred, King 
of the Mercians 



Ethelred Mucill 
ealdorman = Eadburh 
of the Gaini 



Ethelred, ealdorman =Ethelflasd Edward the 
of Mercia | Elder 

Elfwyn 899-Q24(?) 

Athelstan 
924(?)-940 



Alfred = Ealhswith 
871-899 I 



I 
Elfthryth 



Elfgifu = Baldwin II., Count 
I of Flanders 



Ethelwerd 



Adelolf 



INDEX 



Aachen, 14, 34, 184 

Abbo, of Fleury, 112; of St. 
Germain, 195 

Abingdon, 79, note i, 97, 114, 
note I, 121, 125-126 

Aclea, battle of, see Ockley 

Adelolf, King Alfred's grand- 
son, 421 

/Edificia, meaning of, 179-180, 
290-291, 313, note 2 

M\i, Alf, name-root, 69 

.(Elfheah, Bishop of Winchester, 
436, note I 

.^Iflsed of Damerham, 416, 
see EthelflEEd 

.Alfred, or Alfred, name of, 69; 
King, see Alfred; pedisecus, 
69; ealdorman of Kent, 299, 
302, 311; Bishop of Win- 
chester, 311 

Miiric, rail thegn, 254; homilist, 
361, 379, 427-428, note 2, 
436, note I 

.i^lle, South-Saxon king, 49; 
Northumbrian usurper, 
106-107 

iEsc, 120 

^scas, 245 

.(Escesdun, see Ashdown 

.(Esop's fables, 380 

^stel, 312-313, 343-344 

.i^thelferth, king's geneat, 229 

^thelhelm, ealdorman of Dor- 
set, 57 

.^thelhelm or .^thelm, ealdor- 
man of Wiltshire, 190, 226- 
227, 340, 412; son of King 
Ethelred, 136, 227, 419 



Mthelingeigg, Mthelinga-ig, 168, 
439, see Athelney 

.(Ethelm Higa, 254-255 

^thelstan, priest, 268-269; 
bearer of alms to India, 191 ; 
Bishop of Ramsbury, 269 

.(Ethelwald, .^Ethelwold, son 
of King Ethelred, 136, 227, 
411,419 

^thelwulf, ealdorman of Berk- 
shire, 47 ; King, 79-80, note i , 
see Ethelwulf 

^thred, 310, note 2, see Ethel- 
red, ealdorman of Mercia 

^tius, (Aetius, Ettius,) 85, 
note I 

Aidan, St., 144 

Alban, St., 224 

Alband, 167, see Healfdene 

Alcuin, 9, 50, 203, 322 

Aldhelm, St., 192, 313, note 2, 

321, 324 

Alexander the Great, 139-140, 
note I 

Alfar, or Elves, 69 

Alfred, King, birth, i, 59, 61- 
65, 79-80, note I, 339; early 
years, 69 ff., 296, 378, 388; 
story of his mother and the 
manuscript, 76-79, 388 ; visits 
to Rome, 79-86, 90-92, loi, 
378; secundarius, 105, no, 
123, 128; marriage, no, 113- 
115. 293, 388, 392; illness, 
1 1 5-1 16, 289; year of battles, 
1 18-133; accession, 128-131, 
137- 236, 301, 311, 335,337, 
339i 360-361, 409; corona- 
tion, 128-131, 431, note 3; 
campaigns of Wareham, Exe- 



473 



474 



Index 



Alfred, King — Continued 
lev, Athelney, and Ethan- 
dun, 148-150, 157-177, 198; 
treaties, see Guthrum-Athel- 
stan; missions to Rome, 140, 
189-191, 226, 259, 269; mis- 
sion to India, 190-193, 258, 
269; administration, 200 ff. ; 
laws, dooms, or code, 206, 
208-215, 218-223, 225, 230, 
234, 249-254, 257, 260, 272, 
276, 281-284, 315, 324, 326- 

333, 335-336, 359, 420, 425, 
426, 433-434, 444; style and 
title, 25, 220-221; army, see 
fyrd; fortifications, see hurh, 
fcesten, geweorc; navy, 185, 
244-247, 465; long ships, 
ipo, 245-246, 408-409; judi- 
cial system, 247-257, 272- 
273; finance, 257-259; eccle- 
dastical policy, 259-264; 
relations with Papacy, 270- 
271; educational policy, 262, 
271-272, 326-327, 332, 339, 

342-343, 351, 353, 355, 381; 
court-school, 286; love of 
sport and nature, 286-288; 
patronage of foreigners, 273, 
298; buildings, 289-292; art, 
294 ff.; jewel, 298, 301, note 
I, 302-313, 361, 461, 466; 
lantern, 313-314; coinage, 
187, 310, 316-320, 392, 407, 
note 3; literary works, 220, 
322 ff., see Augustine, St., 
Bede, Boethius, Chronicle, 
Anglo-Saxon, Gregory I., 
St., Handbook, Orosius, 
Pastoral Care, Psalter; works 
attributed to, 380; relations 
with Welsh princes, 391 , 393- 
394, 402; with Anglo-Danish 
kingdoms, 392, 407; war 
against Hassten, 396-406; 
last years, 410-412; death, 

334, 337, 339-340, 364, 378, 
411-413, 427-432, 438; burial 
413-416, 430; will, 220, I 
222, 226-227, 386, 416-421; 



family, 421-422; characteris- 
ticSj 422-427; myth, 433 
ff . ; in English literature, 444, 
458, 462-464; millenary, 465; 
see iElfred, Alfry, Alured, 
Elfred, Erfred, Olfry 

Alfred, name of, 69, 311 

Alfry, King Alfred, 462, note i 

Alhstan, see Ealhstan 

Alhthryth, 299 

AUer, Aire, Somerset, 177-178 

Alnea, see Athelney 

Alured, Alvred, Aluredus, Alv- 
rekr or Alrekr, King Alfred, 

, 445, 449, 458 
Amazons, 237, 356 
Ambrose, St., 306, note I 
Amiens, 184-185 
Amund, see Anwynd, 143 
Anaraut, North Welsh prince, 

391, 393-394, 398 

Andernach, battle of, 152 

Andredesweald, Andredsweald, 
26, 73, 240, 395-397 

Angers, 89 

Angles, 10, 48, 355 

Anglo-Saxons, 25, 89, 94, 220; 
chronology, 181, note I, 
427-428, 432; State, 40 flf., 
273; poetry, 101-102; litera- 
ture, 36, 238; agriculture, 
37-38; dress, 35-36; passim 

Anjou, Count of, 99 

Anlaf, the Dane, 443 

Annales CambricB, 385, 393, 
394, note 2, 430 

Anses, see OEsir, 68-69 

Antoninus, wall of, 23 

Antony, 246 

Antwerp, 51 

Anwynd, 142-143, I55 

Appledore, Kent, 396, 398 

Appleford, Berkshire, 125, note 
I 

Aquitaine, 58, 84, 89 

Aristotle, 287, 366 

Army, see fyrd, here 

Arnulf , of Carinthia, Emperor, 
196, see Earnulf; Alfred's 
grandson, 42 1 



Index 



475 



Arpelles (Harpalus), 224 

Art, Anglo-Saxon, 294-315 

Arthur, King, 162, 433, 444 

Ashampstead, 120 

Ashbury, 120 

Ashdown, 62, 133; battle of, 
119-126, 132, 137-138, 158, 
173, 176, 199, 339. 385. 433, 
461 

Assedone, 120, 123, note i 

Asser, Bishop of Sherborne, 
381-389, passim 

Aston, 120 

Astulphus, King, see Ethelwulf 

Asturias, Christian kingdom of 
the, 58 

Athelney, Isle of, 117, 157, 164, 
168-170, 172, 177-178, 198, 
226, 236, 239, 242-243, 262- 
264, 266, 358, 437, 440-441, 
448, 467, monastery, 130, 
169, 258, 262-266, 448, 467 

Athelstan, King, 243, note i, 
388, note I, 411-412, 422, 
426, 429-431, 442, note i; 
under-king of Kent, 32, 56, 
68, 72, 74; see Guthrum- 
Athelstan 

Athens, 133, 238 

Athulf see Ethelwulf, King; 
ealdorman, 114 

Augustine, St., of Hippo, 203- 
204; City of God, 3, 15, 352, 
377; Soliloquies, Alfred's 
translation of, 233, 325-326, 

339, 359, 372-378, 385, 411- 

412; of Canterbury, 207, 

351, 362 
Avilion or Avalon, 162 
Avisle or Oisla, 109 
Avon, river, Bristol, 156-157, 

173, 177; Warwick, 154 
Axbridge, 242 



B 



Babba, moneyer, 29 
Bagsecg, Danish king, 117, 
121-122, 124, 132 



Baldred, under-king of Kent, 

31 
Baldwin I., Count of Flanders, 

97, 268, 421, note 2 

II., 98, 421 

Ban well, 387 
Bardney Abbey, 1 1 1 
Bartholomew, St., 191-192 
Basing, battle of, 126, 132, 

139, 147 

Basingstoke, 73 

Bath, 26-27, 198, 242; mint, 

317 
Bavaria, 17-18 
Beaduheard, reeve, 9, 49-50 
Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 
33, 35, 336; EngHsh version 
of, 351-352, 359-364; writ- 
mgs, 39, 235, 277, 321; 
Martyrologium, 192; chro- 
nology of, 427 
Bedford, 186 

Bedricsworth (Bury St. Ed- 
munds), 112 
Bedwyn, Wilts, 127 
Beldaeg, son of Woden, 65 
Benedict III., Pope, 90, 151 
Benfieet, 398, 400-401 
Beocca, ealdorman, 190 
Beorhtric, under-king of the 
West-Saxons, 28, 30, 49, 93, 
388 
Beorhtwulf, King of the Mer- 
cians, 72, 79, 117, note 2 
Beormas (Perms), 354 
Beornhelm, abbot, 190 
Beornulf, wicgerefa, 228 
Beornwulf, Mercian king, 31 
Beowulf, 35, 49-50, 76, 231, 

290, 309, 360 
Berengar, Lombard king, 196 
Berkshire, 24, 47, 62-63, 69-70, 
79-80, note I, 99, 117, 120, 

127, 133, 136-139, 171, 174. 

179, note I, 417, note i 
Bernard, pilgrim, 193 
Bernicia, 66, 143-144 
Berrocscire, 61; Berroc wood, 

61-62, see Berkshire 
Bertin, St., abbey of, 267-268 



476 



Index 



Bideford, 167 

Billfrith, anchorite, 309, note i 

Bjorn, Ironside, 109; "Son of 
Ragnar," 89, 109 

Blackdown Hills, Somerset, 
163 

Blackmore, 463 

Blackwater, river, 404 

Blooms, see Augustine, St., of 
Hippo, Soliloquies 

Boethius, Anicius Manlius 
Severinus, Consolation of 
Philosophy, King Alfred's 
translation of, 75, 85-86, 
note I, 151, 205-208, notes, 
216-217, 223, 232, 247, 258, 
note 1 , 270, 287, 291 , 294, 300, 
note 3, 308, 320, 322, 324- 
326, 339. 346, 359-360, 364- 
374, 376, 378, 385, 410-411, 
416, note I, 446-447 

Boetius, 368, see Boethius 

Bordeaux, 59 

Boroughbridge, Somerset, 168- 
169 

Borough Mump, King Alfred's 
Fort, 170 

Bouillon, Godfrey de, 92, 462, 
note 3 

Boulogne, 395 

Bradford on Avon, 157 

Bratton Castle, 173, 176-177, 
199 

Bretwalda, 23-24, 26, 28, 32 

Bridgenorth, 406 

Bridgewater, 199 

Bristol, 127 

Britanny, 258 

Brixton Deverill, 172, 198 

Brochmail, Welsh king, 393 

Brunanburh, battle of, 411, 443 

Buckinghamshire, 120 

Burghal Hidage, 175, 241-243, 
263, 399, note I, 404 

Burgundy, 8, 196 

Burh, 147-148, 157, 172, 221, 
224, 237-244, 263, 270, 279- 
280, 288, 317, 349, 355, 357, 
397. 399. note i, 402, 404- 
406; burh-bot, 44, 237; burh- 



bryce, 234; see Fcesten, Fort- 

fication, Geweorc 
Burhred, King of the Mercians, 

79-80, note I, 89, no, 140- 

141, 143, 157, 261, note I, 

269, 391-392 
Butleigh, 199 
Buttington, 240, 402-403 
Buttinton, 402-403, note I 
Byrhthelm, 254 



Cadiz, 58 

Caedmon, 321, 363 

Caerwent (Wintonia), 386 

Calamina, 193 

Cambridge, 143, 145-147. 243; 
army, 145-147, 155; Univer- 
sity, 454 

Camden, 122, 176, 199, 382- 

383, 389. 415, 453. 455-456, 
461 

Canada, 278-279 

Cantaber, mythical founder of 
Cambridge University, 454 

Canterbury, 26, 71-72, 238, 
243, 261, note I, 333, 335; 
archbishops of, see Augus- 
tine, Ethelred, Plegmund; 
mint, 315, 317-319 

Canute, King, the Great, 113, 

425 
Capitol, 239 
Carloman, brother of Louis 

HI., 184, 194 
Carmarthenshire, 387 
Cato, 369 
Ceadwalla, West-Saxon king, 

27 
Ceawlin, West-Saxon king, 26- 

27 
Cenwalh, West-Saxon king, 62, 

162 
Cenred, sub-king, 219 
Ceolheard, priest, 299-300 
Ceolwulf II., puppet king of 

the Mercians, 142, 154, 269, 

319 



Index 



477 



Ceorl, ealdorman of Devon- 
shire, 72 

Cerdic, West-Saxon king, 26, 
29-30, 49, 64, note I, 65-67, 
206, 218, 224 

Chad, St., Gospels, 307 

Charles the Bald, Emperor, 
17-18, 21, 55, 58, 89, 92, 
97-99. 151-154. 204, 265, 
267, 346 

Charles the Fat, Emperor, 116, 
note I, 184, 193-196, 395 

Charles the Great, or Charle- 
magne, Emperor, 1-3, 13-16, 
18-19, 22, 30, 78, 84, 93-94, 
183-184, 194, 197, 203, 272, 
note 2, 322, 346, 382, 389, 
433, 462, note 3 

Charles of Provence, 116, note 
I 

Charles I., of England, 458-459 

Charles II., of England, 459 

Charmouth, Dorset, battles of, 

32, 51, 57 
Chaucer, translation of Boe- 

thius, 365 
Cheddar, 163, 418 
Cheshire, 154 
Chester, 403-404 
Chester-le-Street, 144, 392 
Chezy, 196 

Chichester, 73, 242, 244, 404 
Chippenham, 79, 131, 155-159, 

161, 173-174, 177-180, 198- 

199, 239, 243, 255, 349, 419, 
440 

Chisledon, 418 

Cholsey, 133, 417, note i 

Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, 332- 
340, passim 

Cicero, 205, 369 

Circe, 232, 247, 368 

Cirencester, 27, 180, 198, 449, 
note 4 

Cnut-Guthred, Danish North- 
umbrian king, 392, 406-407 

Codex Aureus, 298, 302, 309, 

311 

Coenwulf, Mercian king, 29, 31 
Coinage, 112, 295, 307, 315- 



320, 392, 407, notes I, 3, 

422-423 
Coliseum, 81-82 
Compton Downs, 121 
Cond^, 184 
Congresbury, 387 
Consolation of Philosophy, see 

Boethius 
Constantine the Great, Em- 
peror, 8 
Constantinople, 8, 238, 305, 
■ 357, see Micklegarth, New 

Rome 
Cordova, Emirate of, 8 
Cornwall, 25, 31-32, 51, 194, 

258, 289, 387-388, 418-419, 

436, note 2, 437 448 
Cotswolds, 154 
Crediton, 388, note i 
Cricklade, 242 
Cross, True, 190-191, 439 
Croyland (Crowland), abbey, 

III, 141-142 
Crusades, 75, 92, 440-441, 449 
Cuckhamsley, 121, 133 
Cuerdale hoard, 302 
Cumbria, 22 
Cuthbert, St., 50, 144, 160, 

164, 306, 392, 431, 435, 441- 

443, 448 
Cuthburh, abbess of Wimborne, 

66 
Cuthred, 62 
Cwantawic, 57, see Etaples, 

St. Josse-sur-mer 
Cynegils, West-Saxon king, 62 
Cynewulf, West-Saxon king, 

232, 280; poet, 321 
Cynric, West-Saxon king, 26, 

49, 64, note I, 67, 224 
Cynwit, fort, siege and battle 

of, 165-168, 236, 238-239, 

243, 245, 385, 399, note I 
Cyrus, King of Persia, 232 

D 

Dado, Bishop of Verdun, 160 
Damerham, Wilts, 416-417 
Damocles, 151 



478 



Index 



Danelaw, no, 144, 315-317, 
390, 395-396, 404, 406, 425 

Danes, see Northmen, Vikings 

Dante, 365 

Danube, river,353 

Dark Ages, i, 345 

David, King, 84, 232, 348 

Dean, East and West, 386 

Deira, 106, no, 143-144 

Demetica, see Dyfed 

Denewulf, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 448 

Denmark, 17, 52-53, 108-109 

Demi, see Dean 

Deoraby, see Derby 

Deorham, battle of, 27 

Deormod, 125, note i 

Derby, 118, 155 

Devizes, 127 

Devonshire, 25, 31, 72, 155- 
157, 161-167, 174, 388, 399- 
400, 402, 408, 418 

Dicta regis jElfredi, 324, 374, 
see Encheiridion, Handbook 

Documenta Regis Aluredi, see 
Proverbs 

Domesday Book, 73, 197, 380 

Don, river, 353 

Donation of Ethelwulf, 87-88, 
96 

Donegal, 50 

Doom of the Gods, 14 

Dorchester, Dorset, 49, 70, 
157; Oxon, 143 

Dorset, 25, 47, 57, 59, 71, 95, 
145-146, 149, 156, 161-162, 
172, 174-175, 228, 262, 408, 
418 

Dorstadt, 51, 59, 71 

Dowgate Hill, brooch found at, 
see Roach Smith 

Downend earthworks, 199 

Dragon, St. George and, 124- 
125; of Wessex, 305 

Dragon Hill, 125 

Drury, playwright, 458 

Dubhgaill, 48, 144, see Stran- 
gers, Black 

Dublin, King of, 108 

Dubslane, Irish pilgrim, 194 



Duisburg, 184, 195 
Dunstan, St., 112 
Dunwich, bishopric, 142 
Durham, 144, 442, note i; 

Simeon of, 50, 144, 176, 389, 

407, 431, 441, note I 
Dyfed {Demetica), 387, 393 
Dyle, river, battle of, 395 



E 



Eadberht, Praen, 29-30 

Eadburh, King Alfred's mother- 
in-law, 113, 391; wife of 
Beorhtric of Wessex, 93, 388 

Eadred, 393, see Ethelred of 
Mercia 

Eafa or Eaba, 29 

Ealhere, ealdorman of Kent, 
72, 79 

Ealhhun, 300 

Ealhmund, Kentish king, 29 

Ealhstan or Alhstan, Bishop of 
Sherborne, 56, 59, 71, 94, 97, 
136, 296, 302 

Ealhswith, King Alfred's wife, 
113-114, 264, 391-392, 415, 
419 

Eanred, 310, note 2 

Eanwulf, ealdorman of Somer- 
set, 71, 94, 136 

Earnulf, Emperor, 395, see 
Arnulf 

East- Angles, East-Anglians, 3 1 , 
106-107, 112, 180, 222, 397, 
404 

East Anglia, 24, 27-28, 56-57, 
106, 108, 111-112, 141, 158, 
180, 186, 188, 318, 402-403, 
406-407, 409, 448-449, 454; 
Danes of, 186, 188, 317, 392, 

397, 399 
East Saxons, 404 
Ebro, river, 21 
Ecgbryhtesstane, 170-172, 198- 

199, see Egbert's Stone 
Ecgulf, 418; horse-thegn, 220 
Eddington, Berks, 171, 197- 

198; Battle of, 463 



Index 



479 



Edessa, 192-193 

Edgar, King, 197, 426, 434, 

435, note I 
Edgarley, 199 

Edilvulf, see Ethelwulf, King 
Edington, Somerset, 171, 197- 

199; Wilts, 171-173, 197, 

199, see Ethandun 
Edith, King Ethelwulf's sister, 

451 

Edmund, St., East- Anglian 
king, 108, 112-113, 116, 166- 
167; coins, 112,318; King of 
England, 426 

Edred, King, 417, note i 

Edulfus, see Ethelwulf, King 

Edward the Elder, King, 114, 
155, 188-189, 243, 246, 251, 
254-255. 262, 274, 286, 319, 
398-401, 411-412, 414-416, 
418, 421-422, 426, 430-432, 
442, 448 

Edward, the Confessor, King, 
crown of, 130 

Edward I., of England, 425 

Edwin, Northumbrian king, 
232 

Egbert, Egcberht, Egcberhtus, 
West-Saxon king, 24, 28-32, 
40, 46-47, 51, 54-56, 62, 
65-66, 68, 197, 315, 338, 
390, 431, note 3, 460, note i 

Egbert I., Egbert II., North- 
umbrian kings, no, 143-144 

Egbert's Stone, 160, 170-172, 
see Ecgbryhtesstane 

Eglei, Berks, 198, see Iglea 

Egypt, 192, note 2, 357-358 

Einhard, 382, 389 

Elbe, river, 21, 182 

Elfred, King Alfred, 88 

Elf thryth, King Alfred's daugh- 
ter, 286, 421-422 

Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem, 

193 

Elised, see Helised 

Elizabeth, Queen of England, 

365, 454 
Ellandune, EUandun, battle of, 

31, 47, 56 



Elmham, bishopric, 142 

Elsloo, 183-184 

Ely, III 

Emperors, Byzantine or East- 
ern, 8 

Empire, 1-3, 6-8, 13-15, 18, 
20, 22, 57, 92, 100, 103, 151, 
154, 178, 182, 194-195, 273, 
395; Eastern, 7-8; Roman, 
6, 23, 368 

Encheiridion, 324, see Dicta 
regis Mlfredi, Handbook 

Englefield, Berks, battle of, 
117, 132, 225, 236 

Eoppa, 29 

Epernay, 184 

Erfred, King Alfred, 83 

Eric or Eohric, Danish king of 
East Anglia, 397 

Esne, bishop, 419 

Essex, 25, 28, 31-32, 56, 68, 
73, 98, 120, 186, 241, 401, 

.404 

Etaples, see Cwantawic, St. 
Josse-sur-mer 

Ethandun, ham of, 114, 197, 
419; battle of , 122, 164, 167, 
171-176, 197-199, 419, 426, 
433, 439-440, 443, 448, see 
Edington, Eddington 

Ethel, name-root, 69 

Ethelbald, West-Saxon king, 
67-69, 72, 74, 79, 86, 94-98, 
100, 105, 129, 135; Mercian 
king, 27 

Ethelbert, Kentish king, 69, 
207, 331; laws of, 210-21 1, 
214; West-Saxon king, 67- 
69, 79, 86, 88, 98, 100-102, 
105, 129, 135 

Ethemsed, Lady of the Mer- 
cians, King Alfred's daugh- 
ter, 187, 243-244, 269-270, 
391-392, 411, 416-417, 421- 
422, 435, note i; of Damer- 
ham, 417, note i 

Ethelgifu, abbess of Shaftes- 
bury, King Alfred's daughter 
264, 421-422 

Ethelnoth,ealdorman of Somer- 



480 



Index 



set, 163, 179, 270, 402, 
407 

Ethelred I., West-Saxon king, 
55, 67-69, 79, 100, 105-106, 
no, 113, 118, 121-129, 131, 
135-136, 138-139, 310, note 
2, 315, 318, 414, note I 

Ethelred II., the Unready, 133, 
426, 434 

Ethelred, Mucill, King Alfred's 
father-in-law, 11 3-1 14, see 
Mucel; ealdorman of Mercia, 
187, 222, 226-227, 243-244, 
269-270, 301, 390-394, 398, 
401-402, 412, 417, 419, 422; 
Archbishop of Canterbury, 
137, 261, note I, 268, 270- 
271, 318, 416, 418-419; 
Northumbrian kings, 310, 
note 2 

Ethelswith, King Alfred's sis- 
ter, 143, 190, 296, 311, 391 

Ethelwald, or Ethelwold, King 
Alfred's nephew, 411, 419 

Ethelwerd, King Alfred's son, 
286, 421, 452; ealdorman 
and chronicler, 49, 73, 118, 
133, 145, 148, 157, 159-160, 
163, 177-179, 187, 189-190, 
194, 366, 379, 391, 398, note 
I, 400, 407, 410, 414, 429, 

431 

Ethelwulf, West-Saxon king, 
father of King Alfred, 31-32, 
54-57, 59, 65-68, 70, 72, 74- 
75, 79-80, 83, 86-98, 102, 
128-129, 135-136, 189, 194, 
204, 220, 222, 296-297, 302, 
306, note I, 311, 313, 315, 
328-329, 336-338, 348, 390- 
391, 412, 417-419, 421, 434, 
440, 458, 460, note I, see 
Astulfus, Athulf, Edtlvulf, 
Eduljus, Donation ; ealdor- 
man of Berkshire, 99, 117- 
118, 136, 138, 179, note I, 
225; Mercian ealdorman, 
114, see Athulf 

Eudes or Odo, Count of Paris, 
see Odo 



Eugenius IV., Pope, 452 

Eurydice, 368 

Exeter, 147, 149-150, 157-158, 
238-239, 242-243, 399-400, 
402, 404, 407, note 2; see of, 
diocese of, 261, 387-388; 
mint, 317, 319 

Exodus, 213, 282, 328-329 

Ezekiel, 348 



Fabricius, 308, see Weland 

Fcesten, 185, 238, 396, see Burh, 
Fortification, Ceweorc 

Falconry, King Alfred on, 380 

Farnham, 398, 400 

Faroes, 10 

Fathers of the Church, 4, 15, 
200, 204, 292, 376 

Fernmail, Welsh king, 393 

Ferriferes, 94 

Feudalism, 2, 19 

Field of Lies {Campus Menti' 
tus), battle of, 17, 51 

Finland, 53 

Finn Caill, 48, see Strangers, 
Fair 

Finns, 10, 354 

Five Boroughs, no, 155, 393 

Five-hide rule, 234-236 

Flanders, 20-21, 51, 182, 184, 
267, 347, 421; Counts of, see 
Baldwin; Matilda of, 98 

Fleet {sciphere), West-Saxon, 
72, 139-140, note I, 145, 150, 
186, 244-247, 408-409; Dan- 
ish, 9-14, 47-54, 57-60, 72, 
99, 145-147, 149, 156, 186, 
244-247, 396, 402, 404, 406- 
410; see Vikings, passim 

Florence, of Worcester, see 
Worcester 

Fontanet (Fontenoy-en- 
Puisaye), battle of, 18, 20 

Fonthill, Wilts, 254 

Fortification, see Burh, Fasten^ 
Ceweorc 

Forum, 81 



Index 



481 



Fox, Bishop of Winchester, 

460, note I 
Fraena, viking jarl, 124 
France, 8, 18, 20-21, 30, 50, 

52, 58-59, 94, i8r 
Francis, St., of Assisi, 104 
Franks, 13, 20, 24, 48, 91, 182, 

186, 273, 395; East, 18, 184, 

395; West, 18, 55-56, 89, 

92-93, 100, 103, 182-184, 

196, 264, 395 
Freawine, mythical forefather 

of the West-Saxons, 65 
Frederick I., Emperor, 462, 

note 3 
Frederick, Prince of Wales, 463 
Frisia, 13, 50-51, 58-59, 71, 

89, 109, 146, 184 
Frisians, 10, 60, 91, io8, 195, 

245, 273. 408-409 

Frithestan, Bishop of Winches- 
ter, 442, note I 

Frome, river, 148 

Fulco, Archbishop of Rhcims, 
261, 267, 270 

Fyrd, Mercian, 72, no; North- 
umbrian, 107; West-Saxon, 
44-48, 68, 72, 99, 118, 133, 
138-139, 139-140, note I, 
145-149, 158, 175, 185, 224, 
233-234, 236-237, 243, 364, 
397-399, 402, 404 



GabatcB, 90, 296, 306, note i 

Gafulford, battle of, 31 

Gaill, or Strangers, Irish name 

for Northmen, 9 
Gaimar, 118, 147, 161, 165, 

note I, 166, 174, 333, 335 
Gaini, 113-114 
Gardariki, Scandinavian name 

for Russia, lo-ii 
Gaul, 10, 159, 258; Gauls, 273 
Geat, demigod, 66, 206 
Genealogy, royal West-Saxon, 

335-338, 361 
Gentiles, Black, 89 



George, St., 124-125; George 
II., of England, 463; George 
III., of England, 465, note i 

Germanus, St., 58, 454 

Germany, 8, 18, 181, note 2, 

353, 395 
Gesithcund, gesithcundman, 230, 

236, 282 
Gesilhs, 42, 45, 138, 230, 243, 

363 
Geule, river, battle of, 395 
Geweorc, no, 117, 175-176, 

185, 239-240, 242, 396, 399, 

401, 405, see Burh, Fcesten, 

Fortification 
Gewis, mythical forefather of 

the West-Saxons, 65 
GewisscE, or West-Saxons, 25, 65 
Ghent, 181, 421 
Gibraltar, Straits of, 10 
Gildas, St., 454 
Gillian, 45^-457 
Giraldus Cambrensis, 385 
Glastonbury, 137, 161-162; 

Abbey, 161, 417, note i; 

marshes, 441 
Glegwising, Glamorgan, etc., 

393 
Gloucester, 27, 154, 241; mint, 

317; shire, 157 
Godfred, Danish king, 13; 

viking leader, 89, 183-184, 

395 

Godfrey de Bouillon, see 

Bouillon 
Gokstad, Norway, viking ship 

found at, 52-53, 245 
Golden Age, loi, 247, 259, 410; 

of England, 434 
Golden Rule, 330-331 
Goscelin, life of Grimbald, 267, 

note 2 
Goths, 10, 60, 338, 352, 368 
Gozlin, Bishop of Paris, 195 
Granta, river, 143 
Grantebridge (Cambridge), 143 
Great Army, 59, see Here 
Greece, 166; philosophy and 

thought of, 4-5; spirit of, 

358 



482 



Index 



Greenland, 10 

Greenstead Church, Essex, 278, 
note I 

Gregory I., the Great, St. and 
Pope, 152, 203-204, 216, 
238-239, 292, 322, 341, 351, 
362; works, 360, 373; homily 
on, 361; Dialogues, and 
Anglo-Saxon translation, 
269, 325, 340-342, 377; 
Morals, 377; Pastoral Care, 
and King Alfred's transla- 
tion, 85, note I, loi, 135, 
201, 213, 223, 232, note 3, 
239, note I, 259-261, 266- 
268, 272, 294, 310, 312, 321, 
324-327, 329, 331, 335, 341- 
353. 359-360, 362-364, 371- 
372, 376, 379, 385 

Gregory IV., Pope, 16, 21 

Grendel, in JBeowulf poem, 76, 

309 
Grimbald, 81, 261-262, 264, 
267-268, 323, 326, 341, 346- 

347, 414-415, 450, 452-454 
Gudrun, see Guthrum-Athel- 

stan 
Gueriir, Cornish saint, 289, 

384, 436-437, note 2 
Gurguntius, British king, 454 
Gurmund, see Guthrum Athel- 

stan 
Gurmundus, 449, note 4 
Guthfrid, IDanish Northum- 
brian Idng, 407, 410, 431, 
note 2, see Cnut-Guthred 
Guthred, see Cnut-Guthred 
Guthrum, Viking leader, 89 
Guthrum-Athelstan, viking 
king of East Anglia, 112, 
142-143, 145-146, 154-155, 
158, 162, 165, 167, 169, 173- 
174, 176, 180, 185, 290, note 

I, 392, 396-398, 419, 437, 
439, 449; baptism of, 177- 
179, 438, 440, 443; first peace 
with Alfred, 180, 243, 318; 
second peace, 186, 188-189, 
222, 230, 317, 319, 324, 390; 
set over East Anglia, 180, 



448; army of, 146-149, 
167, 169; coins, 318; death, 
189; compared to St. Paul 
and Goliath, 440-441 

Gwent, kings of, 393 

Cytro, Gytrum, 439, 448, see 
Guthrum-Athelstan 

H 

Hadrian, wall of, 23 
Hadrian II., Pope, 152 
Hceluredus, 439, see Alfred, 

King 
Hcesten, or Hasting, viking 

leader, 240, 396-401, 409, 

449 
Haithaby, or Schleswig, 354- 

355 

Hamburg, 21, 58 

Hampshire, Hamtunshire, 26, 
30-31, 47, 56, 69, 73, 79-80, 
note I, 99, 126-127, 133, 
139, 160-161, 170, 172, 174, 
398, 418-419 

Handbook, or Encheiridion, of 
King Alfred, 324-325, 328, 
356, 374 

Hardwell Camp, 121 

Harold, Danish king, 20, 54, 
178; viking ja?-/, 124 

Hasting, see Hsesten 

Hastings, 242; battle of, 175 

Hauteville, house of, 109 

Headleaga (Hadlcigh), Suffolk, 
189, note I 

Heahmund, Bishop of Sher- 
borne, 127, 136 

Heahstan, Bishop of London, 
340, 412, see 344, note i 

Healfdenc, viking king of 
Northumbria, "son of Rag- 
nar," 108-109, ii7» 122, 
125, 139-140, 143-144, 146- 
147, 154, 158, 165-167, 317, 
319, 392 

Hebrides, ID 

Hcddington Wilts, 171, 179- 
198 



Index 



483 



Helised, or Elised ap Teuder, 

393 
Helmstan, 254-256 
Hemeid, Prince of Dyfed, 387, 

393 
Hengest, 26, 49, 462 
Hengestesdun, battle of, 32, 47, 

54, 75 
Hennaburgh, 167 
Henry I., of England, 415, 435, 

note I 
Henry II., of England, 425 
Henry III., of England, 444 
Henry VI., of England, 452 
Heorot, hall, 290 
Hercules, 368 
Here, 46, note i, 100, 106, iii, 

117, 133. 139-140, 143, 145, 

147, 149, 154, 158, 170, 175, 

177, 180, 185, 196, 437; 

Micel Here, 59, see Great 

Army 
Herebryht, Mercian ealdor- 

man, 57 
Hereford, 143, 241 
Hereward, 161 
Hervarar Saga, 449, note 5 
Hihernia, 194, see Ireland 
Highleigh Common, 198 
Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims 

93-94, 100, 184, 203-204, 

261,343 
Hingwar, "son of Ragnar," 

viking leader, 108, 167, see 

Ingvar, Ivar 
Hloth, 46, note i, 132, 180, 

397; hlothbote, 46, note i 
Holy Land, 7 

Home, author of Douglas, 463 
Homer (Omarus), 166, 294, 

357, 369 
Horace, 202 

Horik, Danish king, 20, 58 
Horm, chief of Black Gentiles, 

89 
Horsa, 26, 49, 462 
Hours, King Alfred's book of, 

102, 323 
Howel ap Rhys, Welsh king, 

393 



Hrabanus Maurus, 203 
Hrothgar, Danish king, 49-50 
Hubba, see Ubba 
Huda, ealdorman of Surrey, 79 
Humber, river, 28, 31, 106, 155, 

342, 360, 407 
Hundred, 40, 257, 443, 449; 

court of, 228, 257 
Hungerford, 198 
Huns, 100, see Ungri 
Huntingdon, Henry of, 31-32, 

50, 55, 60, 74, 97, 117, 142, 

187, 399-400, 405, note I, 

427, 435' 

Hurstbourne, 418 

Hwicce, 180 

Hyde, Abbey, 262, 268, 415- 
416, 450; see New Minster; 
Book of {Liber de Hyda), 
270, 366, 414, 416, 430, 450- 
451; Register, 414, note 2 

Hygelac, King, 231 



Iceland, 10, 12, 65 

Icknield Way, 117 

Iglea, 171-172, 198-199 

Iley Oak, 172 

Impertinence . . . of Modern 
A ntiquarianism Displayed, 
461 

India, 9, 140, 191-193, 258, 
269 

Ine, West-Saxon king, 27, 29- 
30, 40, 66, 208-209, 220, 
230, 283, 285, 331, 425; 
laws of, 27, 35, 39, 44, 46, 
note I, 208-214, 218-219, 
221, 223, 228, 235-236, 250- 
251, 260, 282, 284, 316 

Ingild, Ine's brother, 29-30, 66 

Ingulf of Croyland, iii, 141- 
142, 267, 270 

Ingvar, 1 07-1 10, see Hingwar, 
Ivar 

Inwaer, 165-167, see Hingwar, 
Ivar 

lona, 51, 160 



484 



Index 



Ireland, 8, 13, 22, 50-51, 53. 
59, 108-109, 146, 160, 165, 
167, 193, 273, 287, 451 

Irish Sea, 10, 156, 244; Danes 
of, 146 

Isaiah, 348 

Isidore, St., 203-204, 249 

Islam, 7-8 

Italy, 8, 17-18, 21, 84, 109, 
143, 151-153, 364, 368 

Ivar, the Boneless, "son of 
Ragnar," Viking leader, 12, 
108-110, 117, 166-167; 
comrade of Olaf the White, 
108; see Hingwar, Ingvar, 
Inwaer 



Jacob, 348 

James I. of England, 458 
Janus, 356 

Jarls, 117, 121-122, 124, 132 
Jarrow, 50 
Jeremiah, 348 
Jerome, St., 292, 328, 377 
Jerusalem, 3, 8, 98, 193-194, 
238; Patriarch of, 193, 258, 

385 

John, King Alfred's helper, 
mass-priest, 261, 266-267, 
326, 341, 346; monk of St. 
Davids, 450; the Old-Saxon, 
264-266, 298, 312, 323, 450; 
the Scot, Johannes Scotus 
Erigena, 265-267, 453, note 
I, 461, note i; King of 
England, 444, 457, note i 

John VIII., Pope, 151-152, 
189, 261, 270-271 

Johnson, Samuel, 389, 463 

Jonas of Orleans, 203, 249 

Jove, 368 

Judaism, 41 

Judas Iscariot, King Alfred 
compared to, 125 

Judith, of Bavaria, wife of 
Louis the Pious, 17, 92, 178; 
daughter of Charles the 



Bald, wife of King Ethelwulf , 

92-94. 97-98, 194-195, 204, 

388, 458 
Judoc, St., 415 
Jumi^ges, Abbey of, 57 
Jutes, 10, 26, 30, 67, 338 

K 

Kells, Book of, 307 

Kempsford Tower, Gloucester- 
shire, 461 

Kennet, river, 116, 120, 126, 
131. 133 

Kent, 24-32, 47, 51, 56-57, 68, 
70, 72, 74, 79, 86, 88, 95, 
98, 100, 106, 129, 137, 175, 
185, 207-208, 222, 226, 238, 
241, 289, 300, 311, 356, 390, 
395-398, 412, 418, 421 

Kentigern, 454 

Kenwith Castle, 167 

Kerry, 50 

Kesteven, 407 

Keynsham, 127 



Lambourn, Berkshire, 114, 119, 
125, 417, note I, 419 

Lanfranc, Latin Acts of, 333 

Langandene, 135 

Langport, Somerset, 163, 169 

Lappenberg, 13, 159, note i, 
179, note 2, 429, note 3 

Lapps, 10 

Laverstoke, Wilts, 296, note i 

Law, 200; Anglo-Saxon and 
English, 33-34, 252, 278, 
332, 425-426, see Alfred, 
Ine; British, 444; Canonical, 
260; custom, 41-42, 207, 
252, 256; Judaic, 214, 331, 
see Moses; Kentish, 39, 210, 
331; Mercian, 210, 331; 
mythical, 452; Roman, 4, 
207; West-Saxon, 210, 315, 
331, 460; theory of, 207-209 

Layamon, 444 



Index 



485 



Lea, river, 186, 405 

Leechdoms, Anglo-Saxon, 193 

Legacester (Chester), 403 

Legatine Council, 214 

Leicester, 142, 155 

Leland, 439 

Leo III., Pope, 16; Leo IV., 

Pope, 21, 81-86, 90-91, 339 
Leofheah, 418 
Leonaford, 387 
Leonine City, 81, 91 
Lewes, 2^2; Song of, 448, note i 
Lichfield, 142 

Limene (Lymne), river, 396 
Lincoln, 155; mint, 317-318, 

407, note 3 
Lindisfarne, 9, 50, 143-144; 

Annals, 431; Gospels, 144, 

309, note I 
Lindsey, 57, iii, 141-142, 269 
Loddon, river, 118, 126 
Loire, river, 20, 58, 89, 98-99, 

151 

Lombards, 91, 196 

London, 26, 57, 72-73, 119, 
140-141, 186-187, 191, 197, 
220, 238, 243-244, 253, 269, 

317. 3i9» 390-391. 393. 401- 
402, 405-406, 412 ; mint, 317, 

319 

Long ships, of vikings, 53, 59; 
of King Alfred, see Alfred; 
see Fleet 

Lorraine, 185 

Lothair I., Emperor, son of 
Louis the Pious, 17-18, 81, 
151; Lothair IL, 151 

Lotharingia, 18, 1 51-152 

Louis the Pious, Emperor, 14- 
18, 20, 54-55, 57, 178, 184, 
194, 249, 346, 384; the Ger- 
man, son of Louis the Pious, 
17-18, 148, 151-152, 184; 
the Stammerer, King of the 
West Franks, son of Charles 
the Bald, 181, note i, 182 

Louis II. , Emperor, 81, 84, 151, 

Louis III., King of the West 
Franks, son of Louis the 
Stammerer, 183-184 



Louvain, 395 

Lowbury Hill, 120-121 

Lucumon, 229 

Ludeca, Mercian king, 31 

Ludwigslied, 183, 197, 381 

Luke, St., 307 

Lullingstone, bowl, 296, note 4 

Lupus Servatus, abbot of Fer- 

riferes, 94 
Lyng, 163, 168, 242, 263; East 

Lyng, 168, 263 

M 

Maas, river, 183, 395 

Macbeth, Maccbethu, Irish pil- 
grim, 194 

Mfelinmun, Irish pilgrim, 194 

Mallet, David, 462 

Malmesbury, 137, 157, 161, 
242, 313, 324; William of, 
30, 55, 124, 142, 157, 164, 
168, 189, 192, 262, 264-267, 
273-274. 313, 314. note I, 
324. 327. 353, 361, 366-367, 
378-379, 409, 41 If 413-414, 
422, 442-443, 448, note 2 

Marcie, Queen, 444; " Marcian" 
law, 452 

Marden, Wilts, 127 

Marinus, or Martin, Pope, 189- 
191, 439-440 

Market Lavington, Wilts, 173 

Marlborough, Wilts, 127, 198 

Mame, river, 196 

Marton, Wilts, battle of, 126- 
127, 131-132, 139, see Mere- 
tun 

Martyrology, Old English, 380, 
427-428, note 2 

Matthew Paris, see Paris 

Maunsel, John Slade of. Ap- 
pendix 

Mead, Dr., 461 

Medeshamstede, or Peter- 
borough. III 

Alediterranean Sea, 8, 10, 14, 
98, 152 

Medway, river, 397 



486 



Index 



Melksham, 173, ig8 

Mendips, 179 

Meon, Hants, 418; river, 30 

Mercia, 27-30, 47, 67, 69, 89, 
iio-iii, 114, 118, 120, 134, 
140-141, 143, 146-147, 150, 

154-155, 157-158, 174, 181, 
187, 226, 240-241, 243, 253, 
258, 268-270, 277, 297, 310, 
319, 323, 359-360, 390-394, 
402, 407, 412, 444; Danish, 
154, 181, 390, 393; witan of, 
222 
Meresig, Mersea Island, 404- 

405 
Meretun, Merton, battle of, 

see Marton 
Merlin, 444 
Mersen, Treaty of, 151 
Mersey, river, 403 
Merton, Surrey, 126; near 

Reading, 127 
Mervyn, Merfyn, father of 

Roderick Mawr, 89, 165 
Micklegarth, or Constantinople, 

II 
Middle Ages, 2-4, 7, 15, 341, 

364, 366 
Milton, Kent, 396; poet, 460 
Minster Lovel, Oxon, jewel 

found at, 298, 302-304, 306- 

307, 313 
Mirror of Justices, 450 
Modwenna, Irish saint, 451 
Mohammedanism, 7 
Moluntyne, Molmutine {Mol- 

mutinae) laws, 444, note i, 

452 
Monasticism, 2, 39, 261-265 
Moneyers, 318 
Monmouth, Geoffrey of, 444, 

452, note 2 
Monmouth, "King," 162 
Monmouthshire, 393 
Montgomeryshire, 403 
Moors, Spanish, 58 
More, Sir Thomas, 366 
Moses, 208-209, 211, 223, 330; 

law of, 208-214, 329-330 
Mouric, 393 



Mucel, minister, 114, note i; 
Mucel, or Mucill, dux, 114; 
the elder, 114, note I ; Esning, 
114, note I 

N 

Nachededorne, 123, note I 

Nansen, 354 

Nantes, 20, 57, 89 

Navy, English, 244-245, 465, 

see Fleet 
Nen, river, 154 
Nennius, 454 
Neot, Neote, St., 55, 164, 270, 

306, 384, 448, 450, 458; 

Anglo-Saxon life of, 380, 

435-438 ; Latin lives of, 435- 

436, 438-441; legend of, 159, 

note I, 435 ff. 
Nero, Emperor, 368 
Nestingus, 451 
Newcastle, 143 
New Minster, 262, 264, 268, 

413-415; see Hyde Abbey 
New Rome, or Constantinople, 

II 
Newton, Court, 456; Park, 303, 

see Petherton 
Nicholas I., Pope, 1 51-152 
Nithard, 20 
Noah, 66 
Nobis, Bishop of St. Davids, 

386-387 
Noirmoutiers, Island of, 57 
Norfolk, III 
Norman Conquest, 426, 434, 

436-437, note 2 
Normandy, 9, 153, 436-437, 

note 2 
Normans, 48 

Norsemen, 59; Irish, 108, 167 
North, Cape, 10, 354; Sea, 10, 

25, 54, 88; Welsh, see Welsh, 

North 
Northmen, see Danes, Vikings 
Northumbria, 24, 27-28, 46-47, 

57, 68, 106-107, 140-141, 

143-144, 154, 158, 167, 180, 

232, 258, 297, 302, 310, 322, 



Index 



487 



Northumbria — Continued 
363, 392, 394, 402, 404, 406- 
407, 410, 449; Danes of, 392- 

393. 399, 411 
Northworthige, Northweorthig, 

118, see Derby 
Nottingham, no, 117, 119, 

155, 239, 243, 392 
Nunnaminster, 114, 264 , see St. 

Mary's Abbey, Winchester 



O 



Oakley, Church, Hants, 73; 
Great, Essex, 73; see Aclea, 
Ockley, battle of 

Ock, river, 120 

Ockley, Surrey, 73; battle of, 
68, 72-75, 122, see Aclea, 
Oakley 

Odda, ealdorman of Devon, 
165-166, 179, note I 

Odin, 148, 166, 433 

Odo, or Eudes, Count of Paris, 
195-196, 395 

CEesir, high gods, 68-69, ^^^ 
Anses 

Ofifa, King of the Mercians, 
27-31, 40, 78, 93, 214, 331.; 
coins, 315; laws, 210-211, 
214, 360 

Ohthere or Ottar, 288, 353-356 

Oisla, see Avisle 

Olaf the White, 108-109, ii7 

Old-Saxons, 195 

Olfry, ballad-name for King 
Alfred, 457 

Open-field system of cultiva- 
tion, 35, 37-38, 282, 350 

Ordeh, king's thegn, 403 

Orleans, 98 

Orosius, Universal History, 
King Alfred's translation of, 
77-78, 85, note I, 132, 133, 
note I, 139-140, note i, 191, 
224, 232, note 3, 237, 239, 
note 2, 246, 322, 324-326, 
335. 351-360, 362, 364, 368 

Orpheus, 294, 324, 368 

Os, name-stem, 68-69 



Osbearn, viking jar/, 124 
Osbert, Northumbrian king, 

106-107 
Osburh, King Alfred's mother, 

67-68, 70, 90, 328, 388; cf. 

76-78, 163, 443 
Oscar, viking leader, 57 
Oscytel, viking king, 142-143, 

155 

Osferth, kinsman of King 
Alfred, 227, 419 

Oslac, pincerna, King Alfred's 
grandfather, 67-68, 220 

Osric, ealdorman of Hants, 
47, 99; of Dorset, 71, 136 

Ostia, battle of, 21, 81 

Oswald, St., 144, 362; filius 
regis, 136 

Oswy, Northumbrian king, 24 

Ouse, river. Little, 112; Bed- 
fordshire, 154, 186 

Owl and Nightingale, 445 

Oxford, 242, 344, 367, 455, 
459, 465, note I ; Almanack, 
462; King Alfred at, 453; 
St. Mary's Church, 455; 
mint, 317, 319; Neote divin- 
ity reader at, 458 ; St. Peter- 
in-the-East, 454; Scholar, 
lines by, 462, note i; Uni- 
versity of, 268, 383, 450- 
455, 458, 460, 465; Univer- 
sity College, 450-451, 452, 
note I, 459, 462, note 2, 
464-465 



Palestine, 192, 362 
Palgrave, Sir F., 214 
Pangbourne, 117, 120 
Papacy, 2-3, 16, 56, 91, 104, 

151-152 

Pans, 21, 34, 58, 98-99, 195, 
196, 395, 449, note 3 

Paris, Matthew, 166, note i, 
448-449 

Parker, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, 333; edition of 
Asser's Life of King Alfred, 
382-383, 389, 424-425, note 



488 



Index 



Parker — Continued 

2, 441, 453, 455-456; manu- 
script of Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, 95, passim 

Parret, river, 162, 168-170, 
240-241, 263, 402 

Parret-mouth, battle of, 59, 75 

Pastoral Care, see Gregory I., 
the Great. 

Patriot King, 463 

Paul, St., 82, 96, 204, 440-441 

Pauli, R., 118, note i, 159, 
note I, 179, note 2, 429, 
note 3, 464 

Pavia, 93, 143, 190 

Peloponnesus, 8 

Pembrokeshire (Dyfed), 387 

Pene wood, 166 

Penselwood, 172 

Pepin, son of Louis the Pious, 
17-18 

Peregrinus, St., gate of, at 
Rome, 81 

Persia, 139-140, note i, 224, 

232, 356-357 
Peter, St., 82, 204; church of, 

at Rome, 21, 96; Abbey of, 

at Ghent, 421 
Peter's Pence, 90-91, 96-97 
Peter the Deacon, 341 
Peterborough, see Medesham- 

stede 
Petherton, North, Appendix; 

Park, see Newton 
Pharaoh, 357 

Philip of Macedon, 132, 357 
Picts, 48, 108, 144; language, 

23 
Pilton, Devon, 242, 399, note i 
Pisa, 98; Pisan Calculus, 428, 

note I 
Plato, 366; Republic of, 217 
Plegmund, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, 244, 261-262, 268- 

271, 323. 326, 335, 341, 344, 
note I, 346, 359, 390, 416 
Plymouth, 32 

Polden Hills, 162, 171, 198-199 
Pollisvytham (Polesworth, War- 
wickshire), 451 



P olychronicon of Ralph Hig- 
den, 450 

Ponthieu, 414 

Pontoise, 195 

Poole harbour, 148 

Pope, poet, 203 

Porchester, 242 

Portland, viking victory at, 57 

Portugal, 58 

Powell, Robert, Life of King 
Alfred, 458 

" Precepts " of King Alfred, 
445-448 

Proverbs of King Alfred, 380, 
445-448 

Prudentius of Troyes, 74, 94 

Prussia, East (Eastland), 355 

Psalter, King Alfred's sup- 
posed translation of, 378- 
379; Anglo-Saxon, 378-380; 
of King ^thelstan, 429 

Punic wars, 356 

Puritans, 330 

Pyrenees, 8 

Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, 139- 
140, note I, 356 



Q 



Quantocks, 162-163 
Quatbridge, 406 
Quatford, 406, note i 
Queen, early West-Saxon, 93 



R 



Ragnar, viking leader, 58; 

Lodbrok, 12, 58, 107-109, 

113, 166-167, 396 
Raphael, 91-92 
Raven, standard, 166 
Reading, 116-119, 124-127, 

131-133, 138-140, 156, 176, 

239, 243; battle of, 118 
Reculver, 29 
Redwulf, Northumbrian king, 

57 
Regnal table, 206, 337 
Regulus, 85-86, note i, 369 
Remigius, St., 184 



Index 



489 



Repton, 141, 243 
Revolution, French, 463 
Rheims, 261, 343 
Rhine, river, 51, 71, 100, 182, 

184, 196, 353 
Rhone, river, 98 
Richard II., of England, 451 
Ricsig, Northumbrian king, 

143-144 
Ridgeway, 119 
Rievaulx, Ailred, or Ethelred 

of, 445 

Roach Smith brooch, 306; see 
Dowgate Hill 

Robert the Brave, Count of 
Anjou, 99 

Rochester, 26, 57, 86, 88, 185- 
186,239,243,401 

Roderick ap Merfyn, Roderick 
Mawr (the Great), Rotri, 
Welsh king, 89, 165, 394 

Roger of Wendover, see 
Wendover 

Roiseng monogram coins, 318, 
note 2 

RoUo of Normandy, 9, 153, 
396, 443, note I, 449, 462, 
note 3 

Roman de Rou, 20 

Roman roads, 119, 127, 198; 
Senate, 364 

Romans, 48 

Rome, 2-5, 7, 16, 21, 23, 27, 
34, 79-83> 89-90, 92, 94, 96, 
loi, 103, 130, 140, 143, 152, 
189-191, 192, note 3, 194, 
226, 238, 259, 269, 321, 330, 
338, 352, 358, 362, 368, 393, 
note I, 437, 439; English 
School at, 92, 143, 189, 437, 
439-440, see Saxon School; 
St. Mary's Church, 91, 143 

Romescot, see Peter's Pence 

Romsey Abbey, 197 

Rorik, fel Christianitatis, viking 
leader, 53-54, 71-72, 74, 89, 
184 

Rotherhithe, 269 

Rouen, 20, 57, 195 

Rous or Ross, John, 452, note i 



Rudolf of Burgundy, 196 
Rule Britannia, 463 
Russia, 9-10 

S 

Sagas, 1 1 ; King Alfred in, 449 
Salisbury, 126-127 
Sandwich, naval battle of, 72, 

75, 244. . 
Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, 

91, see Saxon School 
Saracens, 8, 10, 14, 17, 20-21, 

81-82, 152-153, 449, note 3 
Saucourt, battle of, 181, note 

I, 183-184, 197 
Saul, King, 41, 232 
Savile, Sir Henry, 455 
Saws of King Alfred, 445, 447; 

see, Precepts, Proverbs 
Saxon School, Schola Saxonum, 

at Rome, 90-91, see Rome, 

English School at; songs, 

286; war of Charles the 

Great, 13 
Saxonia (Wessex), 386-387 
Saxons, 10, 48, 71, 124, 131, 

338 
Scandinavia, 11, 119, 184, 353 
Sceaf, King Alfred's mythical 

ancestor, 76 
Scheldt, river, 51, 182, 184 
Sciringshall, 355 
Scotland, 10, 22, 50, 108, 117 
Scots, 48, 193, 273; language, 

23 
Scythia, Scythians, 358, 368 
Seaford, Sussex, 386, 445 
Sebastian, St., 112 
Secundarius, see Alfred, King 
Sedgemoor, 162 
Sedulius, poet. Carmen Pas- 

chale of, 333 
Sedulius Scotus, 203-204 
Seine, river, 20, 57, 89, 98-99, 

109, 150, 152-153, 160, 195- 

196, 406 
Selwood, forest, 95, 159, 170, 

172, 199, 240-241, 402 
Selwood-shire, 97 
Senlis, 92, 97 



490 



Index 



Sens, siege of, 196 
Sergius II., Pope, 21 
Seven Barrows, 121 
Severinus, St., see Boethius 
Severn, river, 154, 240-242, 

402, 403, note I, 406 
Seville, 58 

Sevington, Wilts, 307 
Shaftesbury, 242, 263-264; ab- 
bey, 258, 262-264, 421 ; mint, 

243, note I 
Shelley, 463 
Sheppey, Isle of, 32, 5i» 87, 89, 

396 
Sherborne, 31, 56, 59, 71, 94,97, 

100, 127, 136-137, 147, 165, 

192, 296, 385-386, 388, 419 
Sheriff, 43 
Shire, 40, 47, 223, 257, 259, 

284, 357; court, 223, 257; 

forces, 47, 139, 223; men, 348 
Shires, West-Saxon, 226, 257 
Shoebury, 401-402; camp, 403 
Shropshire, 154, 406, note i 
Sicily, 8, 21, 109 
Sidroc, the Old, Danish jarl, 

124; the Young, Danish 

jarl, 124 
Sigebert, East Anglian king, 

.454 
Sigeferth, piraticus, 407; Irish 

viking, 407, note 2 
Sigeric, 310 
Sigfred, Danish king, 183-184, 

195, 395 

Sigfred, Siefred, Northum- 
brian king, 407 

Sighelm, 191-192 

Sigilm, ealdorman, 412 

Sihtric, viking leader, 89 

Silchester, 73, 119 

Sithcundman, 44, see Gesitli- 
cund 

Sittingbourne, Kent, Anglo- 
Saxon knife found at, 298, 
301 

Slavs, 14, 17 

Soliloquies of St. Augustine, 
King Alfred's translation of, 
see Augustine, St., of Hippo 



Somerled, fabulous Danish 
king, 127 

Somerset, 25, 47, 59, 71, 94-95, 
159, 161-163, 165, 168, 170- 
172, 174, 177, 179, 198-199, 
240-241, 270, 402, 407, 418- 
419, 456 

Somerton, 163, 169, 254 

Somme, river, 98, 182-184 

Southampton, 57, 242; Water, 
25, 99, 408 

Southleigh wood, 172 

Spain, 17, 21, 58, 109 

Spelman, Sir John, 70, 80, 104, 
130, 142, 172, 271, 274, note 
I, 380-381, note I, 427, note 
I, 438, note I, 455, 458-460 

Staffordshire, 154 

St. Alban's Abbej'-, 150, 449 

Stamford, 155, 407 

St. Davids, 386-387 

Steyning, Sussex, 96 

St. Josse^ sur-mer, see Cwan- 
tawic, Etaples 

St. Mary's Church, Rome, 91, 
143; Abbey, Winchester, see 
Nunnaminster 

St. Neot's Priory, Hunts, 383, 
436-437, note 2; Annals of, 
95-96, 166, 189, note I, 334, 
382, 414, 424, note 2, 429- 
430, 435, 436, note i,.438, 
440 

Stone, or Stan, Street, 73 

Stour, river, 186, 404 

Strangers, 160; Black, 144, 146, 
167; Dark, 48; Fair, 48; 
of Ireland, 146 

Strangford Lough, battle of, 
167 

Strathclyde, 144 

Streatley, 120-121 

Streneshale (Stramshall, Staf- 
ford), 451 

Strica, 254 

Stuf,_67 

Suevi, 237 

Suffolk, 186 

Suibhne, or Swifneh, Irish 
sage, 337 



Index 



491 



Surrey, 25-26, 28, 31-32, 47, 
56, 68, 70, 72-73, 79, 98, 
122, 126, 175, 241-242, 289, 
398, 419 

Sussex, 24-28, 31-32, 56, 68, 
96, 98, 120, 175, 229, 242, 
244, 289, 404, 419, 445 

Swale, river, 396 

Swanage, shipwreck, 150, 153, 
167, 174 

Sweden, 355 

Swedes, 10, 60 

Swithulf, 344, note i 

Swithun, St., Bishop of Win- 
chester, 55, 71, 80, 102, 136 

Synods, 204, 208, 212, 214, 
221, 260, 331; Synod-books, 
21 1-2 12 

Syria, 8 . 



Tacitus, II, 232, note i 

Tanist, 128, note I 

Tarquin, 368 

Taunton, 162, 168 

Team, river, 143 

Tees, river, 144 

Tennyson, 424-425, note 2 

Thackeray, 464 

Thames, river, 25-26, 31, 53, 
61, 71-73, 113, 116, 119, 
125, 131, 133, 140, 156, 158, 
161, 170, 175, 180, 186, 240- 
242, 317. 342, 396, 398, 402, 
405 

Thanet, Isle of, 79, 100 

Theale, 117 

Thegnhood, 229-236, 283-284, 
412 

Thegns, 35-36, 41-42, 49, 138, 
213, 258; kmg's, 40, 42, 
229 ff. 

Thenigmenn, 420, see Thegns 

Theodoric, Ostrogothic king, 
364-365, 368 

Thet, river, 112 

Thetford, 111-112, 119, 243 

Thomas, St., 191-193 

Thomson, James, Seasons, 462 



Thorgest, Thorgils, see Turge- 

sius 
Thorney, isle, 398-400 
Thornycroft, Hamo, 465 
Thule, 9, 191 
Tiber, river, 21, 91 
Tidenham, 403, note I 
Tithes, 39, 87-88, 96, 330, 348, 

458 
Titans, 368 

Titus, Emperor, 356-357 
Tone, river, 168-169, 263 
Torksey, 141 
Tours, 89 
Trent, river, no, 141, 154; 

Dorset river 148 
Triconshire, 418-419 
Trinoda necessitas, 44, 236-237 
Troy, 238; siege of, 247; mythi- 
cal laws of, 452 
Turgesius, Thorgest, Thorgils, 

viking leader, 51, 53, see 

Thorgest 
Twyford, 118 
Tyne, river, no, 143, 167 
Tynemouth, John of, Historia 

Aurea, 451, note 3 
Tyrtasus, 357 

U 

Ubba, Ubhe, Hubba, "son of 

Ragnar," viking leader, 107- 

iio, 165-167 
Ubba, arbitrator, 254 
Ubbelawe, 166 
Udd, moneyer, 29 
Uffington Castle, 121 
Ulster annals, 144 
Ulysses, 232, 247, 368 
Ungri, see Huns 
University, see Cambridge, 

Oxford 
University College, Oxford, 

see Oxford 
Uriah, 232, 348 
Utrecht, 51 



Vandals, 60 



492 



Index 



Vatican, fresco, 91; Hill, 91; 

quarter, 21 
Verberie, 92 
Verdun, treaty of, 18, 21; 

Bishop of, see Dado 
Vicus Saxonum, 91; see Saxon 

School 
Viking Age, 9, 107 
Vikings, I, 9, passim; see 

Danes, Northmen 
Virgil, 369 
Volund, see Weland 
Vulgate, 328, 331, 373, 377 

W 

Wace, Anglo-Norman poet, 

444 
Wales, 22, 146, 165, 258, 387, 

393-394, 404 

Walhalla, II 

Walker, Obadiah, 459 

Waller, Roundhead General, 
460 

Wallingford, Berks, 133, 242, 
243, note I, 356; Anglo- 
Saxon sword found near, 
298, 300, 301, note 2 

Wantage, Wanating, Wane- 
tinge, Berks, King Alfred's 
birthplace, i, 61-63, 79-80, 
note I, 114, 119, 125, 417, 
note I, 419; King Alfred's 
statue at, 61 ; Appendix; mil- 
lenary of King Alfred's birth 
celebrated at, 464 

Wardour, Wilts, 254-255, 280 

Wareham, Dorset, 145-148, 
150, 157, 238-239, 242-244 

Warminster, Wilts, 172-173, 
198,-255 

Watchet, 242 

Watling Street, 26, 71, 154, 
186, 403 

Wayland's Smithy, 75, 121, 
309, see Weland 

Wealhgefera, Wealhgerefa, 228, 
229, note I 

Wedmore, 177-178, 180, 418 

Weland, Volund, viking leader, 
98-90 



Weland, magic smith, 75, 308- 

309, see Wayland's Smithy 
Welland, river, 154, 407 
Wellow, Somerset, 419 
Welsh, 140, 236, 273, 391, 

418; frontier, 241; historical 

sources, 393, note i, 394; 

language, 23; princes, 384; 

North Welsh, 32, 79, 240- 

241, 391-394, 402; West 

Welsh, 31 
Welshpool, 403 
Wendelsea, or Mediterranean, 

247 
Wendover, Roger of, 448, note 2 
Werburg, wife of ealdorman 

Alfred, 299 
Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, 

141, 268-270, 323, 325, 340- 

341, 344, 359, 366, 416, 419 
Wergild, 42, 188, 212, 214, 

229-230, 253, 319 

Werod, armed band, 46, note 
I, 47-48, 131, 138, 163, 168, 
232-233 

Werwulf, priest, 268-269, 323 

Wesley, 104 

Wessex, 24-32, 51, 54, 64, note 
I, 65-68, 70-73, 79-80, note 
I, 86, 88, 94-95, 97-98, 
101-102, no, 116-117, 119, 
123, 125-126, 129, 131-132, 
134, 138, 145, 147, 149, 151, 
154-156, 158-159, 165-166, 
174-175, 182, 189, 208, 217, 
224, 229, 241, 252-253, 258, 
289, 297, 305, 310, 315, 323, 

342, 390-393, 397, 402, 407- 
409 

West Drayton, 398 
West Pranks, see Franks 
West-Saxons, or Gewissce, 25, 

passim 
Westbury, Wilts, 173 
Western Isles, 10, 12 
Westminster, Abbey of, 130 
White Horse, Ufiington, Berks, 

75, 121, 124, 199, 461, 462, 

note i; Scouring of, 464; 

Vale of, 61, 122 



Index 



493 



White Horse, Bratton, Wilts, 

173, 176, 199 

White Horse of Hanover, 462 

White Sea, 10, 353-354 

White Shirt, fabulous "son of 
Ragnar, " viking, 109 

Wicgerefa, or town-reeve, 228 

Widsith, poem, 35 

Widukind, Saxon chief, 13 

Wig, mythical forefather of 
the West-Saxons, 65 

V/ight, Isle of, 26-27, 67, 133 

Wiglaf, Mercian king, 31-32, 
69, 114, note I 

Wihtbord, 254 

Wihtgar, 67 

Wiley, river, 131 

William I., of England, the 
Conqueror, 98, 175, 425 

William of Malmesbury, see 
Malmesbury 

Wilton, Wilts, 70, 74, 126, 131, 
242; battle of, 1 31-132, 134, 
138, 236 

Wiltshire, 25, 120, 122, 127, 
131. 135, 137, 139, 157, 161, 
170-172, 174, 190, 240-241, 
402, 412, 418-419 

Wimborne, Dorset, Minster, 
66, 127-128, 137 

Winchester, 26, 28, 47, 55, 71, 
73i 79-80, note i, 86, 96, 99, 
114, 119, 126-127, 132-133, 
137, 228, 242-243, 262, 264, 
268, 317-319, 327, 333. 335. 
337, 386, note 2, 409, 413- 
415, 418, 421, note I, 445, 
454, 465; bishops of, 71, 311, 
436, note I, 442, note i, 448, 
460, note I ; see JEliheah, 
Denewulf, Fox, Frithestan, 
Swithun; mint, 317-319; 
Nunnaminster, 114, 264, see 
St. Mary's Abbey 

Windsor, Anglo-Saxon dagger 
pommel found near, 301, 
note, I, 309 

Wintonia, see Caerwent 



Wirral, 403 

Wise, Francis, editor of Asser's 
Life of King Alfred, 121, 312, 
note 3, 382-383, 459, note 2, 
461-462 
Wistley Green, 118 
Witan, wise men, royal Council 
or National Assembly, 40, 
128, 136-137, 188, 206, 210- 
212, 219-220, 222, 224, 249, 
253, 256-257, 260-261, 329, 
331, 364. 417-418, 445; 
witegan, 348; Mercian, 79, 
no, 187, 214; West-Saxon, 
74, 135, 285. 
Witha (Guido of Spoleto), 196 
Woden, 65-66, 206, see Odin 
Woodstock, Oxon, 367 
Worcester, bishopric of, 141, 
143, 269, 323, 340, 416, see 
Werferth; cathedral, 270; 
Florence of, 324, 374, 389, 
421, note I, 429-430, 434- 
435; manuscript of Pastoral 
Care, 310, 344-345 
Worcestershire, 69, 114, note i 
Wordsworth, sonnets of, 463 
Wrekin {in Wreocensetnu) , 89 
Wulf heard, ealdorman of 

Hamshire, 56-57 
Wulfhelm, aurifex, 300, 309 
Wulfhun, the Black, of Somer- 

ton, 254 
Wulfric, horse-thegn, 228 
Wulfsige, Bishop, 344, note I, 

385 
Wulfstan, 354-355 



Yattenden, Berks, 171, 197 
Yatton Keynell, Wilts, 171, 

197 
Yonne, river, 196 
York, 106-107, iio-iii, 144, 

407; Archbishop of, 261, 

note l; Danish kingdom of, 

392 



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